Dozens of other ships piloted by Jedi and clones alike raced past her as she was pummeled by blaster fire. What in the hell was she doing? It seemed to just be a sudden fear of returning to Coruscant with a battered ship, ready to face the punishment of her mistress and Master Windu.
Adai Seth nervously fumbled with the controls in the tiny cockpit, trying to figure out how to get away from the hectic scene of the battle. She had only been among the fleet for maybe ten minutes before enemy fighters found her. In a panic, she raced for one of the external hyperdrives in attempts to escape.
Suddenly the hyperdrive powered up and she was moving a zillion miles an hour.
“Good thing I’ve got you, R4. You’re probably my only hope in getting back,” the Padawan mumbled, and was scornfully beeped at in reply.
Adai was busy trying to keep her hands from shaking, and coming up with tactful ways to respond to the masters’ angry scolding and punishment for stealing a ship in store for her upon the return, when suddenly her ship lurched and the stream of systems and stars halted, revealing the familiar spheres of light. The girl looked around through the thick glass of her cockpit, and suddenly her eyes grew frantic again.
“R4! Where are we?” she asked, looking around her for any recognizable landmarks that would reveal her whereabouts. The black-and-white-domed droid beeped again.
“Yes, I know I didn’t give you any coordinates! But... c’mon! Don’t tell me we’re headed for a completely arbitrary point in space? The hyperdrive is broken, isn’t it,” the Padawan snapped at the mechanical aide.
The droid made a noise that portrayed a programmed sense of fear and worry. Adai’s stomach plummeted.
“How much power do we have left, R4.”
Beep. The small screen in her cockpit suddenly displayed all of her ship’s vital signs: amount of fuel left, remaining oxygen, parts damaged, external devices, etc.
“That’s just enough to...” Adai glanced again at the planets around her, most of which looked uninhabitable.
But one small, single planet caught her eye below her coasting ship. Green was a good sign.
“There,” she said, pointing. “I might have enough Credits for a tank of fuel, R4. I hope we can land and get off that rock in a few hours.” She gulped. “We need to get back to Coruscant.”
The droid beeped, and Adai took the controls again, this time with a destination in mind. She guided the little star fighter, now in considerable disrepair, towards the lonely planet, bearing only a single moon. She left the external hyperdrive within the orbit of the planet once they got closer, so she could take it on the return.
Adai looked at the green surface of the planet again, it’s two visible continents and vast oceans. This time worry crawled back into her mind. “R4...” she said slowly, “What planet is this?”
The droid tootled a bit.
“What do you mean,” she said.
It seemed to whimper this time.
“What do you mean you don’t know!” she shouted.
R4 screeched.
The young pilot suddenly felt nauseus as she drew in closer to the planet’s surface. She still saw only green, and blue, and dots of white clouds. But there was no other choice: she had to land here, or risk getting stranded in the middle of space. Her communication system was dysfunctional from the damage done to the ship, and her fuel was running low... she must have stolen a ship already running on the dregs.
There seemed to be a stable atmosphere, she noted, but it looked uninhabited. How long could she last? Twelve food capsules would feed her for... yep, twelve days. And that’s on sparse rations. Perhaps she could send out a distress signal, so that any passerby would know she’s stranded here? No... that entire part of the ship was hit. No communication, expect between her, and her little R4 unit.
“Looks like it’s just me and you,” she said as they began to enter the atmosphere.
The three minutes it took to get through the atmosphere was smoother than she expected. But her mistress told her that some were denser than others.
They shot down through the clouds, and a small red light started flashing; their fuel was dangerously low. She wouldn’t be able to navigate while in the atmosphere to try and find civilization; she had to settle for what was right in front of her: snow capped mountains.
“Hang on R4...”
The mountains rushed up on them, and they were steeper than she expected. With a sudden acceleration, she dodged one of the peaks and without time to take evasive action, she plowed right into a massive snowbank.
Somewhere not too far away, in a peaceful little valley, a thunderous boom sounded in the distance...