Tom can't be a legit "Demon" because this is, you know, Star Wars. Therefore, I have decided that Tom's species is known as a "demonicite." And no, he can't manifest fire. He's just a dude with three eyes, two horns, and purplish skin. And sharp teeth, I guess, because that's important according to Rio Durant from Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Star is still a Mewman, though I haven't fully decided what that means in the context of Star Wars yet. Marco and Janna are still humans. Pony Head is still an astromech. Palpatine is still the Emperor. The inquisitor is still inquisitive. Yoda is still green.

You get the point.

The inquisitor stood on a landing platform, watching the sky. The commlink built into its helmet beeped.

"Yeah."

"Sir, the YV-model freighter we were pursuing has escaped, though we did manage to damage it just as it jumped to hyperspace."

The inquisitor silenced the commlink, scowling beneath the mask. They're more resilient than I expected, I'll give them that. But they won't elude me for long.

Several different sirens began blaring in the cockpit of the Raventalon while angry red emergency lights strobed slowly on and off.

"What's happening?!" Star yelled over the alarms.

"I don't know!" Janna cried. Her fingers flew over the control panels, frantically flipping switches. "Nothing is responding! I can't shut anything down!"

Rapid beeps and chitters came from PY-HD. "Pony Head says there was some kind of electrical spike and the navicomputer is down!" Tom cried.

"We're flying blind, then! We gotta drop out of hyperspace, NOW!" Janna's usual stoic demeanor was faltering. She grabbed both hyperdrive control levers in panic, shoving them both down. Outside the forward viewscreen, the blue and black swirls of hyperspace did not vanish. She pushed the levers back up and then down a second time, but the Raventalonremained in hyperspace.

"Janna, what's going on?!" Marco cried.

"I can't drop us out of hyperspace!"

"Why?"

"How the heck should I know? Pony, give me something!" The astromech screamed various noises in reply. "You gotta be kidding me!"

"What did she say?" Star asked, unable to follow the astromech's binary at the moment in her panicked state.

"She said the main computer got hit with that power surge, too, and the controls are locked out!" Janna stood up. "We're gonna crash into something in hyperspace, we gotta shut down the hyperdrive!"

"How?!" the other three all yelled.

"Uhh..." Janna snapped her fingers and looked at Tom. "You still got Marco's lightsaber?"

"Yeah?"

Janna held her hand out toward Tom, beckoning for the weapon. "Give it."

Star looked at Marco. "Why does Tom have your lightsaber?"

"I'll tell you later if we don't die."

Tom pulled the lightsaber from the breast pocket of his leather jacket and deposited it into Janna's waiting palm. She quickly darted from the cockpit, raced down the steps to the lower deck, and at the first door in the short corridor punched the door control.

Janna's eyes went wide as a deafening whine met her ears. A wave of hot air passed over her, the interior of the room that contained the main hyperdrive becoming scalding hot from the overheating components. The hyperdrive's outer housing coursed with arcing bolts of electricity as the internals failed to carry the immense electrical load.

"That's probably not good," Janna muttered to herself. Taking every step carefully, she ventured into the room, making her way over to the hyperdrive. Making sure she did not touch the hyperdrive housing, she ignited Marco's lightsaber, squeezed her arm between the hyperdrive and the bulkhead, and sliced through the hyperdrive power feed cable. Instantly the whine emanating from the hyperdrive began to soften, and the electrical arcs across the housing fizzled out.

Back up in the cockpit, Tom, Star and Marco all gave a sigh of relief as the swirls and colors of hyperspace shifted back into a star-speckled black curtain outside the forward viewscreen.

"Janna did it!" Marco said excitedly. "We're out of hyperspace!"

The relief was short lived, though, as various warning lights and alarms continued to flash and blare.

Tom started flipping switches again, but nothing seemed to be happening. "I still have no controls, though, and the sublight engines are locked at full power."

A moment later, Janna returned. "Whatda we got?" she asked briskly, tossing Marco's lightsaber to its rightful owner as she retook her spot in the pilot's seat.

"I still have no controls," Tom told her, "and the engines are stuck at max throttle."

Janna shook her head as she confirmed Tom's words. "Pony, do you have any access to the ship's computer now?"

The droid gave a lengthy reply. Marco, being the only one who did not understand astromech binary, leaned closer to Star and whispered, "What did she say?"

"I think said now that the hyperdrive isn't causing a system overload, she has access to very basic functions for each system, and power routing."

Janna thought for a second, her eyes flickering over the various warning lights before her. "Okay, Pony, here's what I want you to do. Kill power to all systems except life support and emergency lighting."

PY-HD agreed to do so, and after inputting a few commands into her terminal, the lights flickered off, replaced with amber-tinted low-power emergency lights drawing current from deep-cycle rechargeable batteries. The Raventalon's systems whined as they shut down, and a moment later, the ship became very quiet. Even the warning lights on the control panels went out.

No one spoke for several long moments until finally Star asked, "Soooo...now what?"

"Now...now we wait for everything to cool off so that we can fully assess the damage," Janna replied. "And then, hopefully, we fix everything." She stood up from the pilot's seat and leaned her forearm against the seat back. "So, Marco, where's that food?"

Marco almost couldn't believe what Janna had just said. His gaze flickered to Tom and then to Star, and their confused expressions suggested they were just as surprised as he was. "How could you possibly think about eating right now?" he asked slowly.

Janna shrugged. "Blind panic works up an appetite."

"...It's still in the storage compartment on the speeder bike."

"Sweet. I'll grab it and meet you guys in the crew lounge." And Janna sauntered out of the cockpit as if their current situation was completely ordinary.

Star stood up, looking out the forward viewscreen. Outside, she could see nothing but the inky blackness of space speckled with pinpricks of light emanating from hundreds of distant stars and planets. "Tom?" she asked as she squeezed around the front seats for a closer look. Marco followed her.

"Yeah?"

"Where are we?"

Marco leaned over the control panel, looking as far as he could in every direction. "I sure don't see any planets or suns...or anything."

Tom sighed. "I don't know exactly with the navicomputer down, but I do know that we aren't in any star system. We're just...nowhere."

Janna hadn't been exaggerating. She was indeed quite hungry. She ate of the smorgasbord of food Marco had purchased from Britta's with gusto, while her three companions picked at their food slowly and silently.

Tom's mind swirled back and forth between two thoughts:

Will we be able to repair the ship with the spare parts and tools we have onboard? How in the galaxy is Janna so calm right now?! We could be lost in space forever and she doesn't look even the slightest bit concerned!

Marco, meanwhile, felt nauseous. He'd been just a few words away from telling Star how he felt about her. I said "I". I needed a minimum of two words. Five words would have been clearer, but two would have been enough.

But I didn't say it.

I only wanted to tell her because I thought we were going to die. But we didn't die. And I also didn't tell her.

Should I tell her now? Is she wondering what it was I was about to tell her?

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Star chewing on what might be the last burrito from Britta's Tacos that she would ever eat the slowest he had ever seen her chew. She hung her head slightly, gaze affixed on the burrito wrapper unfolded on the table in front of her, her expression looking weary and worried.

I wonder what she's thinking.

Star was thinking, What could Marco have possibly wanted to tell me?!

Janna wiped her mouth and stood up from the table. "Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm exhausted. It's gonna be a couple hours at least until everything has cooled off, and we left Coruscant nearly at sunset, so I think I'm gonna turn in for some shut eye."

"Don't you think we should keep an eye on the ship's systems?" Tom hesitantly asked. "Just in case something, like, catches on fire?"

"If you want to keep watch, be my guest, but I'm going to bed." And Janna left without another word.

Tom hung his head dejectedly. "Oooookay then."

Marco noticed Star trying not to appear to be looking at him. "What?" he asked of her.

"N-Nothing," she said, taking another bite of her burrito and looking off elsewhere.He said he wished he had told me sooner... This fact bothered her. She and Marco had just had a whole conversation about not keeping secrets and being able to tell each other anything.

So what wasn't he telling me? Is he even going to tell me now?

I'm gonna have to ask.

Tom stood up from the table. "Well...since it's apparently my job because I'm the one who's worried, I'm gonna go make myself comfortable in the cockpit and...you know...'keep watch.'"

"You want one of us to stay up with you?" Marco asked.

"Nah. You guys get some sleep. I've got Pony Head for company." Tom headed for the door. "Goodnight." And he headed for the cockpit, leaving the two Jedi Padawans alone.

Star set down her burrito, only half-eaten, and finally looked at her best friend beside her, having been casually avoiding eye contact with him during dinner. He felt her eyes on him and met her gaze.

"You okay, Star?"

"Marco, what did you want to tell me?"

He jumped in surprise. "What now?"

She groaned. "When we were about to jump away from Coruscant, you said you had something to tell me. I think you even said it was something you wished you had told me sooner. So what is it?"

Marco could almost feel his heart-rate increase. "Uh...well...I-I, uh...You...I...uh..."

Silence fell over the room, the two Padawans staring at each other.

"Star..." Marco swallowed nervously. "...I can't tell you."

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Uh, why not? You started to."

Marco blushed and looked away in embarrassment. "Yeah...I did...because I thought we were gonna die. But then we, you know..." He shrugged. "...didn't."

"I don't understand. Why can't you tell me now? Didn't we just have this conversation a couple days ago? You know you can tell me anything."

"Yeah, well, anything except this," Marco said, his tone unintentionally annoyed.

Star felt hurt. "Oh." She looked down at her burrito, slowly becoming cold. "Okay." She slowly stood up from the table. "I'm..." She pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "I'm gonna go...you know. Sleep."

Marco felt like his heart was about to seize up. She was hurt; he could see as much written on her face. But he didn't know what to say. "Oh. Okay. Uh...goodnight, I guess."

"'Night." And Star left.

Now Marco was all alone. He clenched his right hand and brought it down on the table in frustration before flopping back into the chair he sat on. "Way to go, idiot," he whispered under his breath. "Great job."

"Okay, gang, here's the rundown."

Janna stood holding her datapad while Tom, Star, and Marco sat around the table in the crew lounge. The two Jedi Padawans sat across from each other instead of on the same side of the table, which Janna did not think she had ever seen them do anytime the four of them were together. PY-HD sat beside the table. The crew of the Raventalon had spent half of the day going over nearly every onboard system, and now Captain Ordonia had a full list of the damages.

"First off, the main hyperdrive is beyond repair. The superconductor coils got so hot that they melted through their retainers and made contact with the inside of the housing which is why it overloaded, and the coil being shorted out to the housing fused it to the case, so-" Janna shrugged. "There's no fixing that."

"What even happened to cause that?" Tom asked.

"Beats me. We must have been hit by a missile right at the exact second we jumped to lightspeed and the explosion caused some kind of backfeed into the hyperdrive that caused it to just continuously keep drawing power past the cutoff." She made a gesture with her hand to convey a lack of certainty. "I don't know.

"Anyway, the fusion reactor is down. The stator bearings overheated and locked up when we shut it down, so we have no motive power until we get it fixed, which doesn't really matter anyway because we have no sublight engines. The port side one is fixable, just needs a few internal components that wore out when we did our slingshot. They're parts that I keep spares of onboard and can be replaced from inside the ship, so that's not too bad. The other two were damaged when that missile hit us, which also did some damage to the hull. Fortunately, the shields took the brunt of that explosion, but it still did enough damage to take out two of the engines. The entire starboard side sublight thruster housing is destroyed, the central engine's housing is cracked and we could fix it if we could go outside but we can't, so, yadda yadda yadda, there's no fixing those."

She paused for a deep breath. "As for the electronics, Pony Head says the power surge from the hyperdrive overloading caused the ship's computer to freeze and basically lock everything in whatever mode or position it was in when the surge happened. She says she can fix that with programming. Right, Pony?"

Affirmative sounds from the astromech were the reply.

"As for the navicomputer...she says she can't access it electronically at all, so it's either fried or the wiring might just be fused. Whichever case, we'll have to take it apart and see what's up. Annnnd-" She checked the list she had made on her datapad. "That's everything."

Her friends all stared at her blankly. Tom let out an exaggerated breath.

"Janna, that...that is a lot," Marco said. "What exactly is our plan for fixing it all?"

"Can we even repair all that while we're stranded out here?" Star asked.

Janna held our her datapad for them to see. "If there's one thing I've learned in my career as a smuggler, it's that you always have to plan for the unexpected. This is an old ship, stuff breaks sometimes. So, the forward storage compartment has a decent stockpile of spare parts." She showed the two Padawans a data file containing a list of every spare part Janna had onboard theRaventalon. "As for having a plan, we gotta restore control over the ship's systems and get the reactor back online, first and foremost. In fact..." She turned to PY-HD. "Pony, why don't you go get started on getting the controls working right now?"

The droid beeped out a protest.

"I know you do, but could you please? We need the main computer back up so we can turn the power back on. Until we have power, we can't even turn on the lights, and fixing everything else will be way more difficult."

The droid grumbled as it reluctantly scurried out of the crew lounge.

"Once Pony gets the controls working and we get the power back up, we can replace the stator bearings in the reactor. Then we fix the port side sublight engine, and we'll have to take our slingshot system apart so that we can use the backup hyperdrive to get us, you know, anywhere that's an actual planet so we can repair everything else."

"What about the navicomputer?" Star reminded her.

"Tom is decent with wiring, so, Tom, why don't you handle that?"

"I'll do my best," the demonicite replied. "But I'm not making any promises."

"Fair enough," Janna shrugged. "So, Star, you wanna team up with me on the reactor and Marco can help Tom with the navicomputer?

"Fine with me."

Star's answer did not sound like her usual cheerful self. Marco couldn't detect any emotion in her voice at all.

Oh, me...what did you do?

Janna switched off her datapad. "Alright! We've got a lot to do, so let's get to work!"

PY-HD beeped enthusiastically.

"Alri- Ow!" Tom yelped as he sat up excitedly and hit his head on the computer internals inside the access panel.

"You okay?" Marco asked.

"I'm fine." Tom rubbed the sore spot on his head. He was lying on his back on the floor with his head inside the access panel beneath the bulkhead-mounted housing where the navicomputer resided, using a flashlight to examine the circuitry.

"What happened?"

"Pony just said she thinks she's restored manual control, and I got overexcited. Janna probably will want the power turned back on. Can you call and tell her? It's not exactly easy for me to get out of here."

Marco felt his pockets. "Shoot, I left my commlink in the galley."

"Just use mine. It's on the copilot's seat."

A hand extended up from inside the open top of the fusion reactor. "Adjuster wrench, please."

Star located the wrench in Janna's toolbox and placed it in the captain's waiting hand.

"Thank you." The hand disappeared back down inside the reactor. The girls had removed the top cover of the reactor and Janna had squeezed inside to access the lower stator bearing.

A beeping sound caught their attention. "Someone is hailing my commlink," Janna said. "Probably Tom. Can you grab that, Star? It's on top of the parts boxes in the corner."

"Sure," Star said blankly. She found Janna's commlink and pressed the button to answer the transmission. "Hey, Tom."

"Actually it's me," replied Marco's voice.

"One second."

Janna jumped, startled as her commlink suddenly clattered to the bottom of the reactor beside her. "It's for you," Star called from outside.

Janna raised a confused eyebrow and picked up the commlink.

"Hello?"

"You guys okay down there? What was that noise?"

"Star, uh, dropped the commlink when she handed it to me. What's up, Marco?"

"Pony says she thinks she restored manual control."

"Oh, fantastic. Can you guys turn the power back on?"

"Uhhh...Tom is kinda...unavailable...at the moment. Why don't you walk me through it?"

"Okay, sure. Before Pony turns manual control back on, every switch, dial, lever, whatever, that isn't in the 'off' position needs to be turned to 'off'. Don't forget the control panel above the pilots' seats." There was a pause and then she added "Oh, some things don't have an 'off' setting, they say 'neutral.'"

"Gotcha. Give me a minute."

As Marco scanned over the control panel and began resetting toggle switches, he felt a wad of guilt in the pit of his stomach. Star didn't even want to talk to me...

"Okay, Janna, everything is in either 'off' or 'neutral'."

"Cool, now tell Pony Head to reset the ship's computer. When it reboots, it should be back on manual control."

"Pony-" Marco started, but the droid had heard everything Janna had said and cut him off with a series of curt bleeps.

"I think she got the picture, Bro," Tom called from inside the navicomputer.

"Yeah, I got that from context."

PY-HD's socket spun in the computer terminal, and a moment later the red-tinted emergency lighting went out, plunging the cockpit into near-total darkness.

"Whoa, it's dark!" Marco said.

"I'm fine in here," Tom joked. "I've got a flashlight."

"With the computer resetting, nothing works, even the emergency lights," Janna's disembodied voice told him. "Give it a minute."

Carefully feeling around with his hands in the darkness, Marco found the pilot's seat and sat down to wait. A few moments later, PY-HD's binary language gave some instructions that Marco did not understand.

"What did Pony say?"

"She said after being reset, she's locked out until someone gives her access," echoed Tom's voice. "You have to do that from the control panel."

"Turn the lights back on first," Janna said. "It's pitch black down here!" Marco heard a faint noise that he thought sounded like a lightsaber ignition. "Oh, that's a little better. Thanks, Star. Marco, you probably should get life-support back online right away, too."

"What do I do?"

"On the overhead control panels above the seats, there's a toggle switch labeled 'Main Cabin Power.' Switch that 'On.'"

"Okay, hang on. I can't see a thing."

Marco pulled his lightsaber from his belt and pointed the emitter in a direction where he was reasonably sure he wouldn't hit anything with the blade and switched it on, bathing the cockpit in an emerald glow. He stood up and held his lightsaber up to read the labels on the controls. He found the switch labeled as Janna had described and flicked it up. Nothing appeared to happen.

"Okay, now what?"

"There should be another switch near that one that says 'Interior Lights - Main Circuit.'"

Marco found that switch as well, and flicked it up. The lights just outside the cockpit flickered to life, but the cockpit was still dark. Marco poked his head out and could see lights on in the crew lounge, as well. "Janna, some lights came on, but the cockpit is still dark."

"It's still dark down here, too. Star, try the wall switch." After a pause, Janna said,"Ahh, that's better! Lights down here work. Just try turning on the cockpit lights from the switch control by the doorway."

Marco hit the button and the bright white cockpit lights illuminated. "There we go!" Marco switched off his lightsaber and returned it to his belt.

"That's progress! Have Tom give you instructions for the life-support system, I gotta get back to what I'm doing."

"Roger that."

Janna switched off the commlink and squeezed her top half through the opening on top of the fusion reactor. In the bright overhead lights, she got a good look at Star's face for the first time since before they escaped from Coruscant. The Jedi Padawan's typically wide and energetic blue eyes drooped, her jovial smile uncharacteristically missing from her face.

Janna held out the commlink. "Can you put this back over there?"

"Yeah. Sure." Star took it.

"Why aren't you talking to Marco? You mad at him or something?"

"What?" The question caught Star off-guard. "I-I'm not mad at Marco? Why would you say that?"

Janna lowered her eyes and spoke slowly. "Because when you heard Marco's voice on the comm, you practically threw the commlink at me."

"It slipped out of my hand. Sorry about that. C'mon, we should focus on getting the reactor up and running again. Tell me what I can do to help."

Janna did not believe a single word Star had said, but she did agree that getting the fusion reactor back online was their number one priority. She made a mental note to return to the topic at a more appropriate time and ducked back down inside the reactor.