The Cold Read online

  © & TM 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-00896-9

  Cover art by Lucy Ruth Cummins

  Interior art by David Buisán

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: Lina’s Lie

  Chapter 2: Moonfall

  Chapter 3: Crash Landing

  Chapter 4: The Final Hunt

  Chapter 5: The Wall

  Chapter 6: Strangers in the Deep

  Chapter 7: Snow Fight

  Chapter 8: Partners

  Chapter 9: The Tractor Beam

  Chapter 10: Self-Destruct

  Chapter 11: That Sinking Feeling

  Epilogue

  THE SPEEDER bike’s engine shrieked as it tore through the forest, its repulsors throwing up a plume of dead leaves and scraps of moss. Milo Graf thumbed the gears, pushing the speeder even faster. He turned sharply, almost ploughing straight into a greddleback termite mound the size of a Wookiee.

  “Those things are everywhere,” he complained, weaving around the nest.

  “You’d see them sooner if you weren’t going so fast,” shouted his sister, Lina. She was perched behind him, her arms locked around his chest.

  “Do you want us to get caught?” Milo shouted back, racing through a clearing. Lina squinted. She had become accustomed to the gloom of the forest, and the sudden light, unfiltered by the thick canopy, was blinding.

  They disappeared back into the trees, almost crashing into the twisted trunk of a sprawling fallen tree.

  “Any sign of them?” Milo asked his sister, spitting out an insect that had flown into his mouth.

  Lina glanced over her shoulder. “No, I haven’t seen them for ag—”

  She broke off, spotting a flash of red through the fungi-covered tree trunks.

  “There they are!”

  Lina cried out as Milo swerved around a twisted hanava tree, nearly throwing her from the seat.

  “Watch it!”

  “You watch them!”

  Keeping a tight hold on her brother, Lina reached for the leather holster strapped to her thigh. Unclipping a battered yellow energy slingshot, she swiveled around, raising the catapult. The scarlet speeder bike was gaining on them, bobbing between the trees and greddleback mounds. Its driver was hunched over the controls, his face protected by a mirrored mask. A slender figure sat behind him. It was a woman, with a slingshot of her own.

  The woman fired, a pellet of shimmering light arcing toward them as Milo swung the speeder to the left. The shot went wide and burned up in the air, dissolving into a shower of small sparks. Lina exhaled in relief. That was close.

  “What are you waiting for?” Milo called over his shoulder. “Shoot back!”

  Closing one eye, Lina aimed the slingshot and fired.

  The woman jerked back in her seat.

  “I got her,” Lina cheered. “I got her!”

  “Finally!”

  “I’d like to see you take a better shot!”

  “Wanna trade?”

  Before Lina could reply, Milo threw the speeder into a turn, the bike tilting so violently that Lina’s kneepad scraped across the forest floor. She pressed herself against Milo’s back and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Oh, no!”

  Lina snapped her head up to look over Milo’s shoulder. “Oh, no, what?”

  And then she saw ahead the largest greddleback mound either of them had ever seen. It towered into the sky, as tall as a building! They were going to smash into it!

  “Milo!” Lina screamed, but her brother didn’t reply. He slammed on the airbrakes and the speeder jackknifed. It skidded sideways, straight toward the all-too-solid mound.

  “Jump!” Milo yelled, flinging himself from the bike. Lina did the same, grunting as she hit the forest floor and rolled to a stop. The speeder pounded into the greddleback hill, sending dust and debris flying into the air.

  “Mom’s not going to be happy,” Milo groaned as the red speeder bike screeched to a halt in front of them.

  There was no escape this time.

  Gingerly, Lina got to her feet, her hands raised in surrender.

  “I’d get up if I were you,” said the man in the mask as he swung himself off the speeder. His hand was already resting on his slingshot. “It’s over!”

  “You wish!” yelled Milo, scrabbling to his feet. “No surrender!”

  He ran for the trees as their masked pursuer raised his slingshot and fired.

  “Awww, not fair!” Milo groaned as the sensor plate strapped to his back buzzed. “Da-ad!”

  The man reached up and pulled off his mirrored mask, revealing the handsome face of their father, Auric Graf.

  “We won fair and square, kiddo!”

  “Without crashing our speeder,” the woman pointed out, glaring at them from the red speeder bike. Then she laughed, unable to keep up the act any longer. She got off the bike and hugged her daughter.

  “Good shot, Lina.”

  Lina grinned up at her. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll fix Milo’s speeder.”

  Rhyssa pulled Lina in tight. “I know you will. Like mother, like daughter!”

  Behind them, Milo pulled out his comlink.

  “Tell me you got all that, Crater,” he said into the microphone. A mechanical voice responded immediately.

  “At the speeds you were traveling?” said CR-8R, the Grafs’ uppity droid. “The holo-drones don’t have hyperdrives, you know.”

  “He got it,” said Auric, ruffling Milo’s hair. “We can watch it together when we get back to the Bird. Let’s go home.”

  “Pause!”

  The image of Auric and Milo froze, the tall man gazing down at his son with affection.

  Sitting in the Whisper Bird’s living quarters, Milo sighed. He must have watched the holo-feed a thousand times. That had been a good day. The best. Speeder tag through the termite forest of northern Indoumodo. His eyes played across the holographic scene in front of him. Mom helping Lina pull their crashed speeder back onto its repulsors. Milo laughing at Dad.

  Mom had modified those slingshots herself, the energy pellets harmless balls of light set to trigger the sensors strapped to their backs. Mom and Dad had always tried to find time for a game no matter what planet they were exploring.

  Tears pricked Milo eyes and he sniffed hard. No, he wasn’t going to cry again. That was not why he’d been browsing the Grafs’ collection of holo-recordings. He just wanted to remember what life had been like before this nightmare had begun, before Mom and Dad had been kidnapped by Captain Korda of the Imperial Navy.

  He would never admit it to Lina, but sometimes Milo struggled to remember what their parents even looked like.

  “Shut down,” he told the projector, and the forest scene vanished.

  The Whisper Bird’s cramped living quarters had never seemed so empty.

  A small rust-colored animal scampered across the floor, squeaking happily as it threw itself into Milo’s arms.

  “Watch it, Morq!”

  Milo laughed as his pet Kowakian monkey-lizard knocked him off balance. He rolled onto his back and hugged the creature. Somehow Morq always knew when Milo needed a pick-me-up.

  “Come on,” Milo said, prying the monkey-lizard’s spindly arms from around his waist. “Let’s go a
nnoy Lina and Crater.”

  “Bringing us out of hyperspace.”

  The Whisper Bird shuddered as the swirling blue vortex outside the ship was suddenly replaced by a vast star field. Planets and moons rushed toward them and then stopped as the Bird’s sublight engines brought them to a halt.

  Lina sat back in the pilot’s chair and looked at the warning light that was flashing above her head. She reached up and tapped the bulb. A rear stabilizer was on the fritz. That wasn’t a problem. Repairs could wait until they got back to Lothal. After everything the Whisper Bird had been through over the past few weeks, it was a wonder the old ship could fly at all, let alone navigate hyperspace.

  Behind her, Milo burst into the cockpit. He was barely through the door before Morq leapt from his shoulder to land on CR-8R’s metallic head.

  “Get off me, you revolting fleabag,” the droid snapped, swatting at the monkey-lizard with a chrome-plated arm. Lina grinned. Morq loved tormenting poor CR-8R, and despite his complaints, she had a sneaking suspicion that the droid secretly enjoyed the attention.

  “Are we there yet?” Milo asked, flopping down in the chair behind CR-8R’s navigator station.

  “Yup,” Lina said, avoiding looking her brother in the eye. She busied herself with the fault locators. “Just need to check the primary systems before we locate the transmitter.”

  “I’m still amazed the Bridgers agreed to this mission,” CR-8R said, finally dislodging Morq with a blast of compressed air from one of his many manipulator arms. “Entrusting the repair of a relay station to a couple of children…”

  “Hey!” Lina said. “We know what we’re doing!”

  “Well, you do,” admitted Milo. “I wouldn’t know one end of a transmitter array from the other.”

  Lina rolled her eyes. She and her brother had been living with Ephraim and Mira Bridger on Lothal for a while, ever since they had been rescued from a traitorous bounty hunter known as the Shade. The Bridgers were rebels, secretly broadcasting anti-Imperial messages across the Outer Rim. They used a network of forgotten transmission satellites from the days of the Old Republic, hijacking frequencies the Empire considered obsolete. One such satellite had stopped functioning, and Lina had volunteered to travel out there to fix the problem.

  “We’re not sure,” Mira had said, fixing the children with her purple eyes, but Lina could be extremely persuasive when she wanted to be.

  “It’s fine,” Lina had told their hosts. “The transmitter’s in the middle of nowhere, as far from the Empire as you can get. We can be there and back in just a few days. Besides, we’ll have Crater looking after us.”

  She could still hear CR-8R’s haughty response to that: “Mistress Lina, I was constructed by your mother to assist in serious scientific research. I am not a babysitter!”

  The Bridgers had finally agreed. Lina’s stomach tightened when she remembered Ephraim persuading his wife to let them go. “We can trust them, Mira. They know what they’re doing.”

  Mira had sighed. “I guess you’re right. We can’t expect them to stay cooped up in our basement forever.”

  Milo leaned forward in his chair to peer through the cockpit’s transparisteel window. “So, how long before we get to Pion?”

  Beside Lina, CR-8R turned at the name. “Pion? We’re not going to Pion, Master Milo.”

  Lina closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable. This had been sure to happen sooner or later.

  “Yes, we are,” Milo insisted. “That’s where Ephraim said we’d find the faulty transmitter. The Pion system.”

  Lina felt CR-8R’s optical sensors boring into her. “But Mistress Lina told me to set course for the Xala system.”

  “The Xala system?” Milo repeated. Now he was staring at her, too. “Lina, you didn’t!”

  “Didn’t what?” CR-8R asked.

  Lina sighed. It was time to come clean. She swiveled in her chair to face Milo.

  “The Xala system isn’t that far from Pion. We can check here first and then head for the transmitter before the Bridgers even know what we’ve done.”

  CR-8R’s arms were crossed across his barrel-like chest. “And what exactly have we done, Mistress Lina?”

  “We’ve lied to the Bridgers, that’s what!” Milo answered. “Well, she has!”

  “Look, Crater,” Lina began, “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell them we were coming here first. You remember that lead Mira got from her contact in the Empire? The intel about where Mom and Dad are being held?”

  “Intel?” CR-8R exclaimed. “Who do you think you are, Mistress Lina? A Bothan spy?”

  “The information suggested they were being kept in the Xala system,” Lina continued, ignoring the droid. “Here!”

  “But Ephraim decided it was too dangerous,” Milo reminded her. “There’s no way of knowing whether the information’s genuine or not. It could be a trap.”

  “Or it could be real. Ephraim was right. We don’t know for sure unless we look. We can’t just ignore it, Milo. If Mom and Dad are here…”

  “No!” CR-8R said firmly. “You tricked the Bridgers. You tricked me.”

  “But, Crater—”

  “No buts! I’m setting course for Pion this minute. Once the satellite is repaired, we’re heading straight back to Lothal so you can apologize!”

  Behind them, Milo sniffed. “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to have a quick look around would it? As long as we’re here…”

  CR-8R’s head snapped around. “Master Milo! Not you, too.”

  “It won’t take long, I promise,” Lina said, seizing the moment. “We’ll scan the system for life signs, that’s all.” She glanced out of the cockpit at the giant icy moon in front of them. “We’ll probably find nothing, but if there’s a chance Mom and Dad are out there…”

  She let the sentence hang in the air. CR-8R looked from one child to the other before admitting defeat. “Oh, fine. But we’re leaving at the first sign of trouble.”

  Lina didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She fired the ship’s engines, sending them flying toward the ice moon. “Thank you, Crater. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before an explosion ripped through the Whisper Bird.

  “WHAT WAS THAT?” Milo cried out as he was thrown from his seat.

  CR-8R checked the damage report. “We’ve been hit by blaster fire. Near the exterior heat vents.”

  Further explosions rumbled through the ship, the cockpit reeling as the Whisper Bird shook violently.

  “More blasters?” Lina yelled.

  “Negative,” CR-8R replied, data flowing from the Whisper Bird’s computers into his own processors. “The initial shot has set off a chain reaction within the ship. We’ve lost the hyperdrive, fuel stabilizers, acceleration compensators.…”

  The explosions kept coming.

  “Can’t you hold her steady?” Milo asked, trying to pry Morq from around his neck.

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?” Lina snapped back, wrestling with the controls. “Who fired on us?”

  “Hang on,” Milo said, dragging himself back into his chair. Turning to the rear control panel, he flicked a large green switch. “The exterior scanners aren’t working!”

  “Why not?” Lina asked.

  “How should I know?” Milo said, slamming his fist against a blank display screen.

  “Allow me,” CR-8R said, inserting a probe into the console’s access port. It whirred and clicked as the droid tried to reboot the Bird’s communication system.

  “Hurry up!” Milo said.

  “I am!”

  Static burst across the display, replaced a second later with the view from the back of the Whisper Bird. A sleek starship was on their tail. It was the color of a TIE fighter, with a long arrow-like hull supporting twin engines.

  “Curious,” CR-8R commented. “I’ve never seen a ship with that configuration before.”

  “It has to be Imperial,” Milo said.

  �
�This far into Wild Space?” Lina asked, still fighting to keep the Whisper Bird flying straight.

  “I knew it was a trap!” CR-8R shouted. Another explosion rumbled through the ship, and Lina cried out as sparks burst from the controls above her. The ship lurched to the right, and Milo whacked his head on the computer console.

  “Are you okay?” Lina shouted over her shoulder.

  “I’ll tell you when the room stops spinning,” he groaned.

  Lina yanked at the control stick, but nothing happened. “No, no, no! This isn’t good!”

  “What isn’t?” Milo said, appearing at her side.

  “The engines aren’t responding,” Lina said, frantically flipping switches on the dashboard. “I can’t slow us down.”

  “How is that a problem? Shouldn’t we be running away as fast as possible?”

  “You don’t understand,” Lina said, looking through the canopy. “We’re caught in the ice moon’s gravity. We’re going to crash!”

  On the flight deck of the Imperial ship, pilot droid RX-48 slammed his cracked blue visor over his electronic eyes in frustration.

  “You were only supposed to disable their engines!” growled a deep voice behind him.

  “Mission accomplished,” RX-48 sneered as the Whisper Bird careened toward the mountainous moon. “I also knocked out their navigation systems, life support, and deflector shields! Yay me!”

  RX-48 could imagine the look on the humanoid’s face. He could also imagine the idiot’s hand reaching for his blaster.

  Go ahead, the droid thought. Blast me into a thousand pieces. I’d like to see you pilot the Star Herald on your own, you pretentious nerf herder!

  “Is something amusing you?” his employer snarled.

  “Only that you stole a top-of-the-line Imperial scout ship to chase down that bucket of bolts,” RX-48 replied. “Talk about overkill. What a junk heap!”

  “That junk heap contains precious cargo. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your vocabulator if it’s destroyed.”

  RX-48 peered through his grimy visor. The Whisper Bird was in a bad way. Energy crackled across its engines, the glow of a dozen fires showing through cracks in its hull. There was no guarantee the ship would even make it to the moon, let alone crash.