CHAPTER
SEVEN: LOST IN SPACE
Hyperspace swirled by the passenger shuttle, First Mate, while Jaina sat alone in its cockpit in quiet contemplation. Lusa was off reading about the Dezzlec, and Ganner was probably somewhere practicing his lightsaber techniques so he could showoff to the locals.
They had been in hyperspace for hours now, and Jaina had spent every one of them up there in the cockpit. She had tried to brush up on her knowledge of the Dezzlec system, but only got as far as the Dezzlec were a humanoid species when her mind started wandering for the billionth time.
Lusa had come to visit her several times, and they had talked about everything from the Yuuzhan Vong invasion to what Lusa's close friend Raynar Thul was up to these days. Ever since his father's death, Raynar had taken on an enormous load of responsibilities for the Thul Merchant Fleet. Right now, he was somewhere with his mother and the fleet, working hard to keep it safe from the Yuuzhan Vong. Raynar had managed to send Lusa a few holo messages, the latest one saying he was planning on returning to Yavin Four as soon as he could because he knew how bad fully trained Jedi were needed these days.
Jaina could see how much her centaur friend missed the Alderaanian young man, but she would see him again soon. At least Raynar had managed to stay in contact with her the entire time he was gone, which was a lot more then Jaina could say about a certain other person she knew.
Lusa had not hung around too much, though, sensing Jaina wanted some privacy, and thankfully enough Ganner had made himself scarce since they had departed from Yavin Four.
She found it impossible to concentrate on her own mission after her Uncle had told her that Anakin was having some kind of emotional problems, and that he had run off again after accidentally injuring Tahiri. Jaina had wanted to go after him, but Luke had explained to her that Tahiri was already on her way to Tatooine, and that only she alone would be able to help Anakin – if he let her. She had asked if he had a vision about it, but Luke had said no, it was just a feeling he had that the two of them needed to see this through together. And most of the time Luke Skywalker's feelings were right. Still, she wished she knew for sure if Anakin was going to be okay.
Jaina could picture the heartbreaking look on her mother's face when Luke told her that Anakin was gone and would not be back until he had worked out some major personal issues. Leia would blame herself, Jaina was sure of that, and her father? She wondered if he would even care. She knew what a tough time he was going through, but sometimes he just made her so mad.
Suddenly, the deck plates started vibrating beneath her feet, knocking her from her reverie. Before she knew what was going on the entire shuttle was shaking.
"What the h–"
She never got a chance to finish that sentence as the First Mate shuddered one last time and dropped out of hyperspace – into the waiting clutches of two Yuuzhan Vong warships, no more than a thousand kilometers away from their present position.
"What's going on?" Ganner said as he and Lusa walked into the cockpit. He answered his own question when he looked out the forward view port.
"They must have set up one of their Interdictor ships along our hyperspace route," Jaina said to them as she furiously worked the controls in front of her, trying to get all the Mate's systems back online.
"We've got company," Lusa announced.
Looking up, Jaina saw more than a dozen coral skippers heading their way. Thinking fast, she said, "Ganner, take the lasers, while I try and get us out of here."
They were sitting in a diplomatic passenger shuttle that the New Republic had given them to use for their mission, which did not have much of a defense system, save for their shields and a small laser canon that would probably not do any real damage to the skips. Jaina was beginning to regret hoping for an exciting trip. Stuck in a bulky shuttle with barely any defenses and a fleet of coralskippers bearing down on them, was not the kind of excitement she had been looking for.
By the time she had managed to get the engines back online, the first of the skips had started firing at them. The ship shook with each shot of plasma that the shields absorbed.
They did not have a whole lot of options. They would most certainly not be able to shoot their way out of there – their shields would fail long before then – but calculating a safe jump to lightspeed might also be just as deadly. Jumping blind though, was an option that Jaina would only consider if they were out of alternatives. No matter how short a jump she planned, there would be no guarantee they would not blast right through an asteroid or into a supernova. First, though, she would have to get them out of the Interdictor's range or they would never be able to jump to lightspeed.
"I hope you have a plan," Ganner said to her between shots.
"Yeah, it's you do your best to keep those skips off of us, while I put the shuttle into some evasive maneuvers until the nav computer has the coordinates for us to jump out of here,"
"Well, it better be soon because I don't know how much longer we can hold up out here,"
She knew what he meant. The Mate's shields were already done to seventy-five percent after absorbing shot after shot that was being fired at them. The ship was just not designed to take this kind of a pounding. Ganner was doing his best to hit the skips, but even his best shots just grazed the yorrik coral or were swallowed up by the dovin basals.
Heart pounding in her chest, Jaina maneuvered them away from the attacking skips – but they kept hot on their tail, firing relentlessly at the shuttle. She tried a few evasive maneuvers but they turned out too sluggish to do any real good. Still keeping her concentration focused on the battle, she watched the counter on the nav computer continue to tick back. They still had a ways to go before they would be safe in hyperspace, now that she had managed to maneuver them out the range of the Interdictor.
Face grim, she continued to focus on dodging the plasma fire from the enemy skips. Shields were down to fifty percent now. They would not be able to take a beating like this for much longer.
Despite the peril of their situation, there was something bothering Jaina about the way the coralskippers were attacking them. Each one of their shots appeared to be carefully aimed at a specific part of the ship. There was no random pattern or wild firing. Right now, though, she was too busy trying to keep them alive long enough to escape to dwell on it too much.
"Anytime now would be good, Solo,"
The words were not even out of his mouth when the counter ticked back to zero and the star lines of space stretched around them, taking them away from the mess of coralskippers and into the welcoming surroundings of hyperspace.
Jaina did not even have a chance to relax because the second after they entered hyperspace, the sound of an extremely loud bang echoed throughout the ship. She knew immediately that it must have come from the engine room. I have a bad feeling about this, she thought to herself.
Following the bang, the shuttle started vibrating and its passengers were thrown back into their seats. The Mate continued shaking uncontrollably until it spit them out into real space – but not at the coordinates Jaina had programmed them to come out at. They were just lucky they had come out into empty space.
"We made it," Lusa said relieved.
"We're not out of the water yet," Jaina told her, "we came out of hyperspace way too early and I think that bang we heard caused it." Just as she said that, her nostrils turned up at the smell of smoke. Lusa and Ganner could smell it to. She needed to get back there and try and fix whatever it was that was smoking, or they would all be flaming debris before long.
"I need to go see if I can repair whatever is damaged back there," she went to get up from her seat but Ganner pushed her back down into it.
"You need to stay here," he told her, "I'll go,"
She shook her head. "I'm the only one who can fix it,"
"No," he said, pointing to the controls, "you're the only one who can fly this ship and land without blowing us into a million pieces." Without waiting for her answer, he took off for the engine room.
She wanted to argue with him but was grudgingly forced to agree with Ganner. Yes, she could probably fix or at least temporarily repair some of the damage, but someone needed to fly the ship. With all the damage there was, it would take an especially skilled pilot to land them safely somewhere so they could perform the major repairs – and she was a far better pilot then Lusa and Ganner put together.
She ran a quick diagnostic to see what kind of shape they were in. She frowned at the readings in front of her. "Our starboard engine is fried, the maneuvering thrusters are offline, and navigational controls have short circuited," she grimly informed Lusa, and who knew what other problems Ganner might find in the engine room.
Lusa looked out at the planet hanging in space in front of them. "Do you know where we are?"
Jaina studied the sensors – at least they still worked – trying to figure out where in space they were. The sensors identified the planet rotating in front of them as Scelvic, which meant they had to be somewhere in the Meridian Sector. And that meant they were only about a hour or so hyperspace jump from the Dezzlec system.
"We're not too far from the Dezzlec system," Jaina informed her friend. "That planet out there in front of us is Scelvic,"
"I've never heard of it,"
"That's not too surprising considering it has no real value and no one's lived there in over a decade," Jaina said, remembering her mother telling her about the planet. "It's mostly composed of grasslands and forest areas. My mom told me that for years people tried to colonize the planet but the harsh winters eventually turned everyone away from it. With no valuable minerals or raw materials that couldn't be found on other worlds, the New Republic left it alone. It's an ideal hiding spot for smugglers but no one actually lives there anymore."
Lusa threw back her cinnamon mane. "And you're planning on taking us down there?"
"Don't worry. Scelvic's in its spring cycle, and it's the only planet close to us. I don't want to hang around in space any longer then necessary because we don't even know what it was that brought us out of hyperspace prematurely in the first place."
Turning back around, Jaina placed her hands on the controls, feeling them vibrate beneath her fingers, and took the First Mate in the direction of Scelvic's atmosphere. She could hear the engines chugging, as she tried to coax as much speed as possible out of the Mate – which was not a whole lot. The remaining engines were already straining themselves to the maximum.
The moment they entered Scelvic's atmosphere, Jaina had to fight hard to keep the Mate from spinning out of control.
"I hope your crash webbing's secure, Lusa, because this is not going to be one of my better landings,"
"I have complete faith in your abilities, Jaina," Lusa assured her.
At least one of us does.
Clouds rolled past them at a blurring speed, as they continued their descent to the land below. With most of the systems offline or malfunctioning, Jaina had a hard time killing their speed, but she was going to have to find a way to do it if she wanted them to land without breaking up into a million different pieces. She managed to cut the thrusters in half, slowing their descent even more.
The green landscape was rushing up to meet them at a dizzying pace. It would be less then thirty seconds before they made first impact with the surface.
Bracing herself for the inevitable collision, Jaina thought, I hope you're holding onto something Ganner.
With a bone crunching jolt, the Mate hit the grassy surface and kept on going. It was completely out of her control now, as it skidded and bounced along the ground towards a dangerous outcropping of trees, hitting it head on.
The last thing Jaina remembered before blacking out was the warm taste of blood in her mouth.
