Chapter 2: Faith
by Fuzzy

Pain.

Cold.

Darkness.

They are all I experience as I wait here to die. Because really, that's what's going to happen. Life support can only hold out for so much longer, before Zed tells me that he can't spread the power much thinner. He's a good astromech, one of the best, but he can't work miracles. The ship is spinning now, it has been for the past few days. Drifting and spinning, farther and farther out to the limits of our solar system, and I wonder...

What is the point? Why am I conserving emergency rations? Why am I pushing Zed for repairs? Why am I running low-power mode? The ship is damaged beyond my droid's ability to repair. Without communications, without stress-signals, I have no way to contact the rest of the Royal Spaceforce and tell them I am STILL ALIVE. Without propulsion systems, without fuel, I have no way to go back. The Trade Federation HAS killed me, I just haven't reached it yet.

I'm panicking, which is not good. I take a deep breath, tell myself to calm down. I'm not dead. I can make it out of this, I just need to have a little more faith in the other pilots. They WILL find me.

I tell Artoo Zednine to discontinue starboard repairs, and to redirect all of his efforts to life-support. I look at a switch that I swore I would never use, and flip it down. A low-pitched tone beeps out and then fades to silence. The cockpit gets colder, and now I can even see my breath in the dimming lights of the cockpit. The last display on Zed's message screen before it goes blank is, "I hope you know what you are doing, Logan."

I sigh. I tell him, "They WILL find us. Finish maintenance on the life-support systems and energy conservation redundancies, and then power yourself down."

Cryogenics begins its cycle, releasing anesthetic through the vents, and my eyelids become heavy. Padme will find me.

Padme...