The Cold Read online

  “You said you were the best of the best,” the droid was reminded by that grating voice. “Do something!”

  “I said I was the cheapest of the best,” RX-48 said, grabbing controls with all three of his arms. “You get what you pay for, sunshine!”

  RX-48 heard the creak of his employer’s leather gloves. Yup, the loony had definitely grabbed his blaster this time.

  “But no need to get your medals in a twist,” he added before his employer could permanently terminate their contract. “We’ll catch them, just you wait and see. Engaging tractor beam!”

  “That planet’s definitely getting bigger!” Milo said, staring over Lina’s shoulder.

  “It’s a moon!” CR-8R corrected, not looking up from the computer.

  “I don’t care what it is,” Milo snapped. “Just stop us from hitting it!”

  “The controls are dead,” Lina said as a fiery glow spread across the canopy. “We’re entering the atmosphere.”

  Milo didn’t know what was worse, the heat in the cockpit or the horrible smell of burning.

  There was a dull clunk from above, and yet another alarm joined the chorus of electronic wails.

  “What now?” Milo asked.

  “The Imperial ship is attempting to lock on a tractor beam,” CR-8R told him.

  “Hooray for the Empire,” Milo said with little humor in his voice. “Then why aren’t we slowing down?”

  Lina checked her instruments. “There’s something in the moon’s upper atmosphere that’s scattering the beam. They can’t get a fix.”

  “Great. We can’t even rely on the bad guys to catch us. Any other ideas?”

  Lina set her jaw, staring straight ahead.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Try me,” Milo replied.

  She pointed at the ridge of snowy mountains that lay straight ahead. “We use them to slow us down.”

  Milo’s eyes went wide.

  “Use them how? We crash into them?”

  Lina shrugged. “Or bounce off them.”

  “You’re right. I don’t like it,” Milo told her. “Not one bit.”

  “What other choice do we have?”

  Milo racked his brain. “Escape pods?”

  CR-8R glanced at the fault locators. “Damaged beyond repair. We’ll never launch them in time.”

  “Rocket packs?”

  Lina shot him a look. “Are you crazy?”

  “Says the girl who wants to use an entire mountain range as a crash mat!”

  “Arguing is not the answer,” yelled CR-8R. “Neither is plummeting into an ice planet, I’ll admit, but—”

  “Thought you said it was a moon!” Milo pointed out.

  Lina swallowed hard. The mountains were getting closer by the second. “Okay, guys, brace yourselves. This is going to hurt!”

  “What happened to the tractor beam?”

  “I’m a little busy right now,” RX-48 replied, using all three arms to control their descent. “Unless you want to take over?”

  “An excellent idea!” his client said, appearing beside RX-48. Sliding into the copilot’s seat, he swatted one of the droid’s arms out of the way and took control of the vessel.

  “Hey!” RX-48 complained. “Where are your manners?”

  “They’re weighing the pros and cons of pushing you out of an airlock!” The droid’s employer narrowed his eyes, staring at the viewscreen. “Now what’s happening?”

  The view outside had been obscured by swirling clouds.

  RX-48 checked his display. “Blizzard. Quite a doozy by the look of things.”

  “A little warning would have been nice!”

  “It came out of nowhere,” RX-48 insisted, flipping up his visor to stare hopelessly ahead. “I’m a pilot, not a weathervane.”

  A light flashed on the console.

  “What’s that?” asked the humanoid, glaring at the bulb as if it were the cause of all his problems.

  “Proximity alert,” RX-48 replied. “Remember those mountains, the ones covered in snow?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d pull up if I were you.”

  “What?”

  “Unless you want to see what happens when a scout ship flies into a massive lump of rock!”

  With a bellow that would make a Gamorrean blush, RX-48’s thug of a boss yanked back on the controls.

  “Are you sure about this?” Milo shouted as the Whisper Bird hurtled through the storm.

  “I was,” Lina admitted, “when I could still see where I was going!”

  “Next time, I’m flying the ship!” CR-8R moaned as pressurized steam burst from a pipe above his head.

  “Who says there will be a next time?” Lina asked, holding what little was left of her nerve. “Here we go!”

  Hoping she was doing the right thing, Lina pulled back sharply on the control stick. The Whisper Bird quaked, its nose slowly rising as the front repulsors fired. Flying blind, Lina had guessed the distance to the mountains. But had she guessed right?

  There was a bone-shattering jolt as the ship struck something. Lina’s head snapped back, and for a second she saw stars before she was thrown forward again.

  Wham! There was another crash, followed by the sound of tearing metal, and they were flying straight again.

  “We did it!” Lina shouted in relief, gripping the steering column.

  “Did what, exactly?” CR-8R asked.

  “Skipped off the top of the mountain,” Milo said, breathing hard. “Like a stone on the surface of a lake. You’re amazing, Sis. A maniac, but amazing all the same.”

  “Only if I can land us safely,” Lina said, peering through the snow. “We’ve leveled off, but there’s no telling what we’ll hit when we reach the ground.”

  Beside her, CR-8R’s head whirred. “Accessing Graf family records,” he announced before pausing for what seemed like an eternity.

  “Well?” Milo asked.

  “Your mother and father never surveyed this moon,” CR-8R finally reported. “Although a long-range scan indicated that about 89.94 percent of its surface is covered by frozen oceans.”

  Ahead of them, the blizzard had started to clear to reveal a vast expanse of ice stretching in all directions.

  A vast expanse of ice that was getting closer by the second.

  “Hold on to something,” Lina said through gritted teeth. “I’m bringing her down!”

  THE SOUND of the Whisper Bird hitting the frozen sea echoed across the barren landscape. The ship skidded, cutting a deep trench in the ice, before finally coming to a stuttering halt. Smoke billowed from its engines as the storm passed overhead. For a moment all was still, the arctic wasteland silent except for the distant cry of flying reptiles.

  With a hiss of hydraulics, a hatch flipped open to clang loudly on the top of the stricken spacecraft. Lina Graf hauled herself up through the opening, pulling the collar of a thick winter jacket close around her neck.

  “It’s freezing,” she said into her comlink.

  “Tell me something I don’t know!” Milo replied on the other end of the line. “What’s the damage?”

  Lina stood on the top of the Whisper Bird and looked around. The frozen ocean stretched as far as she could see, the desolate view broken up by a dozen or so forbidding islands. In the distance, vast plumes of water burst into the sky like geysers. It must have been the pressure of the sea below, pushing through the icy crust and up into the atmosphere.

  They couldn’t have landed on a more inhospitable snowball if they’d tried!

  But standing around wasn’t helping. The ice around the ship was littered with debris and hull plates scattered by the crash. The Whisper Bird was in pieces, but at least they had made it down alive.

  “Lina?”

  She raised the comlink to lips that were probably turning blue. “Sorry. It could be a lot worse. What about in there?”

  “The cockpit looks like it’s been hit by a solar flare, a
nd Crater’s racing around like a dopplefly putting out fires. But other than that…fine.”

  “I’m going to look at the landing gear,” Lina told him, starting to make her way down a ladder. She stopped at the final rung and jumped down onto the ice.

  Lina’s feet slipped out from beneath her and she landed with a whumph on her backside.

  “Are you okay?” Milo asked.

  Lina was glad he hadn’t seen her fall.

  “Fine! Just fine.”

  Sighing, she reached inside her jacket pocket and found a set of ice grips for her boots. She put them on before searching for gloves.

  Spotting something, she gingerly rose to her feet. The spikes on her boots held. Good. She’d had enough crash landings for one day!

  Sparks were cascading from the tip of the Whisper Bird’s starboard wing. Lina worked her way along its length, finding an exposed power cable. Instinctively, she reached for her tool belt. A damaged cable was the least of their worries, but repairs had to start somewhere.

  “Can I come out there with you?” Milo whined over the comlink. “Crater’s driving me crazy!”

  “Yes, please do,” she heard CR-8R respond. “Anything to get you from under my feet!”

  “You don’t even have any feet!”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Lina snapped. “That ship’s still out there somewhere, remember?”

  Milo’s voice sounded sulky. “Okay, just don’t be long, all right?”

  Lina pulled out a pilex driver and started work on the wing. “I just need a minute to fix this—”

  A deep groan stopped her from completing her sentence.

  “Lina?”

  What was that? An animal? No, it sounded structural, like the ship’s hull creaking under pressure.

  “Lina, are you there?”

  There was a rumble beneath her feet, something she felt rather than heard. It vibrated through the ice, through the spikes on her boots, through her entire body.

  Milo’s voice came over the comlink. “Lina, can you feel that? Is it a quake?”

  No, Lina realized, it was much worse than that.

  “Milo, get out of there!” she screamed into the comlink. “Get out of there now!”

  “Why? What’s—”

  She didn’t hear the rest of the question. The ice beneath the Whisper Bird shattered as a column of steaming water erupted high into the sky. Lina was flung clear of the ship and thudded down on the ice, crying out in pain. She slid to a stop. Water was falling like hot rain, sizzling against the ice, the same water that had thrown the Bird into the air.

  The thought brought her back to her senses. The Bird!

  Her bruised body ached from her fall, but she had to see. She scrabbled around, a sob of despair escaping from her chest.

  There was no sign of the Whisper Bird. Instead, the ship had been replaced by a yawning hole in the ice.

  “Milo!” she screamed, but it was useless. He wouldn’t be able to hear her now.

  The Whisper Bird had plunged into the depths below, taking Milo with it.

  The deck pitched beneath Milo’s feet and he took a nosedive across the cockpit. Somewhere above him, Morq gave a frightened yelp as loose panels and circuitry crashed down.

  “It’s okay, Morq,” Milo called out, but he knew it wasn’t.

  One minute they had been on the ice, the next they’d been thrown into the air as if whacked by a giant graviball bat.

  It had all happened so fast. The cockpit flipping upside down. Milo cartwheeling head over heels. Then there was the second impact, accompanied by a splash.

  Milo had landed on his back, staring up at the water on the other side of the canopy.

  Now there was another noise, a deep throaty rush of water somewhere from the back of the ship. For a moment, Milo couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or what it meant. Then he realized.

  The hatch. Lina had opened the hatch to get out. Freezing seawater was pouring into the living quarters. They were being flooded!

  “Master Milo,” CR-8R shouted, appearing at the cockpit door. “We’re taking on water. It’s the—”

  “Hatch, I know,” Milo interrupted, grabbing hold of a chair and pulling himself up to the computer terminal. “Can we close it from here?”

  “No,” CR-8R said. “It can only be closed by hand.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Milo groaned as icy water cascaded into the cockpit. He gasped as the deluge hit him, taking his breath away.

  “Climb onto me,” CR-8R instructed.

  “Why?” Milo spluttered in response.

  “Just do it!”

  Milo didn’t wait to be told again. He clambered onto CR-8R’s back, two of the droid’s manipulator arms swiveling up to lock him in place. With a squeal, Morq jumped down to land on CR-8R’s head.

  “No, not you!” the droid protested.

  “He’s scared!” Milo insisted.

  “So am I! Hold on!”

  His repulsors complaining, CR-8R pushed against the tide of water. They reached the living quarters, briny seawater pouring through the open hatch high above. The room was filling up fast, and CR-8R was struggling to stay above the rising water levels.

  “Get me to the ladder,” Milo said. “I’ll climb up to the hatch.”

  “You’ll never make it,” CR-8R told him. The droid hovered near a plastic storage barrel that was bobbing around in the churning water. His manipulator arms released their grip around Milo.

  “You want me to get on that?”

  “And take the monkey-lizard with you!” CR-8R said.

  Milo swung his leg over the barrel, as if he were mounting a dewback. The plastic was slippery, and Milo had to grab the edge as Morq hopped onto his shoulders.

  “What are you going to do?” Milo yelled above the roar of the water.

  CR-8R didn’t waste time replying. He fired his repulsors, rising toward the hatch. Milo wiped wet hair from his eyes as the droid all but disappeared into the torrent, mechanical arms gripping the ladder for support.

  “Crater!”

  The barrel was floating higher and higher, the water level almost up to the ceiling.

  “Crater, are you okay?”

  There was a creak and a slam, and the water stopped rising. Milo looked up to see a dripping CR-8R hanging from the ladder, the hatch closed tight above his head.

  “You did it!” Milo cheered.

  “My joints will be rusted solid,” the droid responded, shaking his head like a musk-hound after a bath. “I’ve got water in my audio receivers, I just know it.”

  “Milo?”

  Lina’s voice crackled from Milo’s waist. He grabbed for the comlink, his fingers stiff with the cold.

  “Lina! We’re here. Can you hear us? Repeat: can you hear us?”

  “Barely,” came the reply. “You’re breaking up.” Lina’s voice was swamped with static, her words almost indecipherable.

  “What was that? Lina, are you there?”

  “I said hold on. I—”

  And then she was gone.

  “Lina! Lina, come in,” Milo begged, shivering in his wet clothes. “Please!”

  “Milo!”

  Lina shook the comlink, as if that could help. Her brother’s distorted voice had cut off, the signal lost.

  Tears spilled onto her cheeks, instantly freezing in the driving wind. A storm was blowing up again. Lina stared into the gaping hole in front of her.

  The Whisper Bird was gone, just like that.

  There was no way of telling how deep the sea was beneath the ice. And even if she knew, what could she do about it? She was just one girl, standing alone on a frozen moon with only ice grips and a thermal jacket to her name. It was hopeless.

  “Shut up,” she told herself. “Milo’s alive. You heard him. And Crater’s down there with him. They’ll find a way. They’ll fix the Whisper Bird and fly back to the surface. They just have to.”

  Something rumbled in the air. Engines. Lina turned to se
e a dot on the horizon. She pulled a pair of macrobinoculars from her tool belt and raised them to her eyes.

  A terrified whimper escaped her lips.

  The Imperial ship was racing toward her like a glistening bird of prey.

  She let her arms drop, the macrobinoculars shaking in her hands. She didn’t need them anymore. The ship was getting larger by the second. They’d shot the Whisper Bird down and were coming back to finish the job. She felt rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to look away.

  No! That’s what they wanted. That’s how the Empire won. By scaring people. By making them feel powerless. Milo wouldn’t give up, and neither would she.

  Lina looked around, her eyes settling on the nearest island. Perhaps there was somewhere to hide. She took a closer look with the macrobinoculars. Yes. The rocks were pitted with caves. She had no way of knowing what was inside, but she’d have to risk it. Better to find a hiding place than stay out in the open like a sitting pelikki.

  Lina started to run.

  The island was nearer than she’d thought, but running in the cold air was almost impossible. Lina’s muscles cramped and her lungs felt as though they were going to explode at any moment. Only the approaching roar of the Imperial engines propelled her on.

  Reaching the rocks, she clambered up to a cave, the spikes on her boots scraping against the frozen ground. She fell once, grazing her knee through her thick trousers, but there was no time to check the injury. The Imperial ship had already landed a safe distance from the hole in the ice. Had they seen her?

  Ducking behind a large boulder, she trained the macrobinoculars on the ship. Its hull gleamed in the cool sunlight, steam rising steadily from its heat vents.

  As Lina watched, a ramp lowered and a tall figure swaggered onto the ice.

  Lina’s breath caught in her throat.

  It couldn’t be…could it?

  The man had changed since she’d last seen him on Thune. The crisp Imperial uniform had been replaced by heavy body armor covered by layers of thick furs. His blonde hair blew in the arctic wind, no longer tucked neatly beneath a peaked cap, and his cheeks were unshaven, covered by many days of growth.