Their trip to Takodana would consist of a series of subsequent lightspeed jumps, carefully planned to avoid major hyperspace lanes, obstacles, and - hopefully - Imperials. Din had just made another jump when he heard footsteps coming up the ladder. He glanced behind him as Winta came into the cockpit, settling into the right-hand seat behind him. It wasn't the first time she'd been up there in the day or so they'd been traveling together, though she'd mostly stayed below. So far, she'd kept her word about not poking around; they hadn't spoken much, beyond the essentials.
"Why do we have to make so many jumps?"
Din wasn't expecting the question. A part of him was inclined to just tell her to be quiet and go below, but he supposed it wasn't reasonable to expect a child to last a several day trip without any conversation. He didn't look at her when he responded, busy checking the navigational charts for the next of such jumps. "We're avoiding the major hyperspace lanes. There are more obstacles on the less traveled routes, and we have to navigate around them."
"Obstacles?"
"Asteroid fields, gravity wells. Anything that might do damage to a ship."
"How do you avoid them?"
He wasn't expecting to give a lesson in hyperspace travel, either. "Carefully. See this?" He indicated the Crest's navigational display, and Winta got to her feet, standing behind his shoulder for a better look. "The navigational chart shows the locations of planets and known hazards, so I can plot the best route. Each jump to lightspeed has to be carefully calculated."
"You said known hazards. Are there unknown hazards?" Her voice was a little bit uncertain.
"Yes," Din answered. "Which is why I'm taking a route I've traveled before."
Winta fell silent, and a glance back confirmed that she'd gone back to her seat. He was just beginning to relish in the accustomed quiet when she piped up again.
"We're avoiding the major hyperspace lanes to avoid the Imperials. Right?"
Din paused in his calculations. He didn't see any reason not to be truthful. "Yes."
"Good."
He glanced back again. She was sitting cross-legged on the seat, looking down at her lap, but looked up as he moved. Din turned back to the ship's controls. "What do you know about the Empire?" He asked after a moment. He couldn't imagine she'd encountered many Imperials on Kijimi.
"Not much," Winta replied. "From stories, mostly. And a few memories."
Memories? Din wondered, but he didn't press.
"But everything I do know says they're bad," she added, more insistently, as though daring him to contradict. Din didn't.
Winta was still with him in the cockpit when they reached the next jump point. She'd gone quiet again, staring out the viewport, apparently lost in thought. After a moment's consideration, Din offered up a narration of his next steps.
"We're about to come out of hyperspace." She immediately snapped to attention at his words, listening intently. "See this here?" She craned her neck for a better look at the display. "That tells me where we are. And this-" He indicated a neighboring series of buttons. "Is where I'll program in the coordinates for the next jump, as soon as we're sub-light."
"How many jumps ahead do you have planned?" She wondered.
"Several." He eyed the navigation display, reaching for the hyperdrive control. "Staying sub-light too long is risky-"
The words died on Din's lips as he brought the Crest out of hyperspace to the sight of two Star Destroyers. He'd been through this sector only days ago. They were technically in Hutt Space, if towards the outer edge, and the planet beneath them was one of the smallest and least significant in the area. What the kriff was the Empire doing here?
"Um." Winta had come to stand directly behind him, her hand on the back of his seat. "What's that?"
"That," Din asserted, all the while mentally cursing everything he could think of. "Is an Imperial blockade."
Unknown hazards, indeed.
"What are they doing here?" Her voice was distinctly higher pitched than normal.
And wasn't that the question. "They're not here for us." Din hoped he was right. If not, he would be having some very choice words with this Maz Kanata that he was supposed to deliver the kid to. "Hopefully they'll just leave us be." He only needed a minute or two to program the coordinates for the next jump. Two minutes, and they'd be long gone.
A flurry of activity around the nearer of the two Star Destroyers solidified into several ships, clearing the edge of the much bigger vessel and heading their way. TIE fighters.
"Dank farrik!"
"What's going on?" Winta demanded.
"Sit down!" Din ordered, banking the Crest hard without bothering to check if she'd obeyed. "And hold on."
It didn't entirely sit well with him, turning tail and fleeing. However, he had a job to do, to keep Winta safe, and engaging even a handful of TIEs was not without risk. He just needed to create enough distance that he could safely make the jump to lightspeed, not to mention the TIEs would eventually fall back the further they got from the Destroyers. Worst case, it would be easier to take them out away from the cover of their home ship.
The TIEs were a bit faster than he would have liked.
The first shots missed the Crest entirely, streaming overhead. Either the TIE pilots were incompetent or they weren't actually trying to do damage. The next ones landed, the ship shuddering as it absorbed the impact, but the shields were doing their job.
"They're shooting at us!" Winta exclaimed. Din ignored her.
The TIEs were gaining ground, but firing at a minimum. They were trying to bring him in, Din realized, to shepherd him back towards the Destroyers and into the tractor beam. That definitely wasn't happening. What was happening was that the TIEs were close enough now to get a good look at his ship. Which meant that letting any of them get away was a real risk. The last thing he needed was an Imperial incident report that described a unidentified Razor Crest making a narrow escape. It was hard enough to discreetly move about the galaxy when they weren't looking for him.
There were only four TIEs, two side by side in front and two further back, flanking them. He'd had far worse odds.
Din pulled back on the throttle, banking the Crest ninety degrees, straight up. Looking up over his head to lock onto the TIEs location, he executed an almost complete somersault, coming down nose first on top of one of the center TIEs. A couple of well-placed shots, and it exploded. Din swerved out of the way of the debris, accelerating straight down behind it before banking hard again to come up underneath the remaining TIEs. They were breaking formation in pursuit, but he was counting on their relative lack of maneuverability, and the fact that they were easy enough to destroy if you knew where to shoot.
He took out a second from below before it had a chance to change course. The other two had successfully veered out of immediate harm's way and, now, Din was once again the pursued. A series of shots rocked the ship, a warning light flashing on one of the Crest's control panels. Din spared it a glance. He dropped the Crest, deliberately losing altitude with the knowledge that the TIEs couldn't maneuver quickly enough to follow. Bringing the nose up, he came up underneath them for the second time. Noting how close they were together, he aimed for the outside wing of the nearest one. A couple of shots had it snapping off, sending the rest of the spacecraft careening into its partner TIE. The other ship attempted evasive action, but not quickly enough, and they both exploded in a pulse of flame and smoke.
A quick glance back towards the Destroyers let Din know that another wave of TIEs was heading his way. Time to go. He veered away and accelerated, punching in the coordinates with one hand still on the throttle. He reached for the hyperdrive control, pushing it forward, and the Razor Crest shot forward and into hyperspace.
Din took a breath, sitting back in his seat. After a moment, he turned to look at Winta.
"You okay, kid?"
She was several shades paler than normal, her hands gripping the sides of her seat, but she nodded.
"What did they want?" Her voice was quiet.
Kriff if I know, Din thought. "They were trying to bring us in," is what he actually said. "They were blockading the planet, likely thought we were headed there." Or they were after his passenger, but Din hoped that wasn't the case. And there was no need to scare the kid. While the Empire might be interested to track down a surviving Mandalorian, he didn't have any reason to think they would have recognized his ship.
"Will they follow us?"
Din shook his head. "Not possible." He tipped his head, scrutinizing her carefully, as something occurred to him. "Is there a reason they would?"
Winta shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes, which definitely arose Din's suspicions. "I dunno."
"Kid." He waited until she looked at him before continuing. "If there's something you're not telling me, now would be a good time to share." He wouldn't normally care about a passenger's private business - a job was a job - but if the Empire was after her, that was something he ought to be aware of.
"I don't know anything," she insisted. "Honest."
Din wasn't entirely sure he believed her, but he decided to let it go. He'd just have to take her word for it for the time being. He turned back to the ship's console with a sigh.
"What's that flashing?" Stars, was she still asking questions?
"We took some damage. Nothing major." That was true, but Din still wanted to see what he could do about repairs. He'd prefer to have the Crest in the best possible shape, in case of any further Imperial entanglements. He stood from his chair, heading out of the cockpit to the ladder.
"Where are you going?"
Winta sounded a little anxious. Din supposed she might never have been in a dogfight before. Probably hadn't been.
"To check on the damage." He was halfway down the ladder and looked up to see her hovering at the top. "Come on then." She certainly didn't need his permission to descend to the lower level, but she scrambled after him with a speed that suggested the invitation was welcome.
The kid took a seat on a crate while Din retrieved a tool kit and unscrewed a panel near the bunk. A shot from one of the TIEs had fried some wires connected to his shield generator. Nothing so serious as to bring down his shields just yet, but best fixed before it could get any worse. He busied himself with disentangling the damaged section, peering into the panel to get a sense of the extent of the problem.
"How do you know how to do that?"
Apparently, once she'd started asking questions, it was hard to get the kid to stop.
Din exhaled in a quiet huff. "If you're going to fly your own ship, you had better know how to keep her in the sky. Otherwise, sooner or later, you'll end up stranded."
While that was true, there was also a time and place for a professional mechanic, and Din was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this might be one of those times. A few component parts were clearly corroded as well, and while he could fix it well enough for the short-term, it'd be better to have them replaced sooner rather than later. He'd planned a stop for fuel, anyway, but there was no point in explaining all of that to a kid.
He glanced her way. "How about you come over here and give me a hand, make yourself useful."
She hopped off the crate and came closer.
"Hand me that wire."
She passed it over, and Din set about swapping it out for the defective part. Winta stood on her tiptoes to better see what he was doing, while also still trying not to get too close. Din found it mildly amusing, the more so as she was really too short to see much, tiptoes or not.
"Was that your first dogfight?" He honestly wasn't sure what possessed him to ask the question.
There was a brief pause. "Yeah," she admitted. And then: "I'm not sure I liked it all that much."
Din huffed what might have been a laugh. "You get used to it," he told her. "Though hopefully you won't have to."
The new wire was in place, and he just needed to tighten the bolt to secure it. For that, he'd need the hydrospanner-
"Here." Winta held it up.
Din raised a brow under his helmet, even as he took it from her hand. He wouldn't have expected her to even know what it was, much less that it was the tool he needed.
"Have you done repairs before?" He wondered, tightening the bolt into place. On Kijimi, anything was possible. If she'd been taught how to repair speeders, for example, or droids, she would have learned her way around a toolkit.
She shrugged. "Not really. Helped a little, I guess."
Din considered that as he replaced the panel and stowed the toolkit. The kid was certainly a bit of a mystery.
Din came down the ladder quietly. It was early, by standard time, and he suspected Winta might be asleep in the bunk. Hoped, even, hence the careful movements. He didn't mind her presence as much as he'd anticipated, but he was used to his solitude. Reaching the bottom, he realized the door to the bunk was still open. Winta was sitting inside on the mattress, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. She might have fallen asleep like that.
Her voice reached him as he turned towards the food storage. "We made the next jump?"
So much for being quiet. And it seemed a rather obvious question to Din. Awake, she would've felt the shift from lightspeed to sub-light, and back again, and they clearly weren't under attack. Her eyes were still closed when he turned back to look at her. "Without a hitch."
She exhaled a breath that might have been relief, and Din resumed his walk to the storage area and the thermos of tea he'd brewed earlier. It was still warm. He poured some into a cup and, with a glance over his shoulder to confirm that Winta's eyes were still closed, lifted the front of his helmet up just enough to down it in one gulp. He set his helmet back in place. After a moment's consideration, he filled a second cup and took it back to the bunk.
"Here."
Winta's eyes opened and, seeing the offered drink, she scooted forward to take it from his outstretched hand.
"Thanks."
Din inclined his head, stepping back. "We're making a stop on Tatooine for fuel. We'll be there in about ten hours."
Winta swallowed a sip of tea. "What's it like?"
"It's a desert."
"Hot?"
"Yep."
"Good," Winta asserted. "I could never get warm enough on Kijimi."
Din took a seat on a nearby crate. Apparently he wasn't going to get back up the cockpit as quickly as he'd intended. "We won't be there long," he warned. Maybe he ought to mention that he probably wouldn't let her off the ship, either.
"What about Takodana?" She wondered.
"The climate?" Winta nodded. "I'm not sure," he admitted, honestly. "I've never been there. Temperate, I think."
She took another sip of tea, and Din was just about to get up when she spoke again. "Do you know her? Maz Kanata?"
He lifted his head, eyeing her carefully. Winta was looking right back at him, eyes wide open and curious. "Should I?"
She shrugged.
Truthfully, Din did know Maz Kanata. Well, of her, at any rate. They'd never met. But Kanata had been around a long time, and he knew her castle on Takodana was a safe haven for smugglers, and anyone else looking to lay low. Din was rarely in that part of the galaxy.
"I take it you don't?" He wondered.
Another shrug. He clearly wasn't getting much in the way of answers.
"You seem surprisingly unconcerned to be handed off to a complete stranger," Din observed, not entirely sure if he was talking about Kanata or himself. Maybe both.
Winta downed the rest of her tea. "It's not the first time that's happened."
Despite himself, Din was a little bit curious.
"At least this time, I get to walk around the ship," she added. "The first time, I spent most of the trip in a crate."
"You've been smuggled before," he realized.
She nodded.
"You're not from Kijimi." It wasn't a question.
"No." Winta shook her head. "Not originally. I've lived there for awhile, though."
"Where are you from?" She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. "You don't have to tell me." Apparent nonchalance about her current situation aside, he couldn't imagine Winta entirely trusted him. And she shouldn't, not that Din had the intention of doing anything other than what'd he been hired for.
"I'm from Corellia," she said after a long moment. "But I haven't been there in a long time."
Din wasn't sure what counted as a long time when you were thirteen or fourteen. Nor what a teenager from the Core was doing nearly in the Outer Rim, although plenty of people had fled Imperial occupied worlds. If nothing else, it might explain her memories of the Empire. But how did she end up out here alone, and why was she now being smuggled across the galaxy again?
Make that a lot curious.