“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.

“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!”