RZ-7 Co-Pilot

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When Maize returned with a bag slung over her shoulder, he asked, “Do you have any credits? We should probably have some, right?”

“Way ahead of you.” She patted the bag. “Now where’s your droid?”

“He’ll be here any second.”

It was more like thirty seconds, but Karr’s family landspeeder chugged up to the house, looking a little tragic next to the nicer homes and vehicles. “Hello, sir. I brought the things you asked for,” the droid announced as the kids climbed aboard.

“Great, thanks, Arzee.”

“And where are we going now?”

“To the spaceport,” Maize told him. “And hurry it up.”

“Are you taking a trip, madam?”

Karr answered that one. “We all are, buddy. I’ll explain on the way.”

By the time they reached the lot where Maize’s dad had parked his company ship, the droid was all caught up and mostly on board. “But, sir,” he said at a volume that could be considered a whisper, “I am not programmed with the necessary—”

Karr stopped him and responded in an equally hushed tone, “You can pick it up as we go. Maize knows how to fly, and she can teach us.” He hoped.

The ship was a smallish First Order yacht called the Avadora, and it looked rather like a silver kitchen utensil whose function Karr could only guess at. It was pretty and shiny, and probably cost more than the town he’d grown up in, but, hey—he needed a ride off Merokia and he could certainly do worse.

The ramp lowered, and Maize strolled inside like she owned the thing. She practically did, as she reassured him on the way to the cockpit. “Nobody needs or wants this ship until my dad gets back.”

“And you said that could be…months?”

“I’d be real surprised if it was any sooner. Sometimes he’s gone as long as a year. Hey, droid,” she said to RZ-7. “Buckle in over here, if you’re my copilot.”

“Yes, madam, but I may need…time to configure.”

“Configure away. Karr, there’s room for you over here, too.”

He squeezed in and latched himself to the seat, exchanging worried looks with RZ-7, who bravely returned his attention to the task at hand.

“Everybody ready?” she asked

Karr tried to sound game. “As ready as I’m going to get.”

“That’s good enough for me,” she mumbled.

“Are they just going to…let us leave? Without paperwork or…?”

“Yeah, my dad has priority clearance. No one will bother us. Watch.” She flipped some switches, closed some hatches, and ignited the engines, and the Avadora lifted smoothly off the landing pad—taking to the sky and shooting past it with ease.

Before long, they were paused in orbit and Karr was silent, staring down at the only world he’d ever known. It was mostly brown and red with desert dust, but streaked with blue where the oceans surged and lakes pooled between the mountains. From up there, it seemed much bigger than it’d ever felt when he was standing on its surface. He’d hardly ever flown anywhere before, much less beyond the atmosphere, but he lied when Maize brought it up.

“I like the view better up here. Have you ever been to space before?”

“A couple of times. But it’s been a while,” he added, before she could ask for any specifics. “I forgot how…um…quiet it is, up here.”
Together they admired the faint glow of the atmosphere beneath them. “Yeah, it can be. So where do we go now?” she asked.

“Now?”

“We have to go somewhere, and I’m open to suggestions. What have you got?”

He scratched at the back of his neck. Now that this whole “running away” plan was really underway, he wasn’t sure where to take it. “We should definitely go looking for Jedi artifacts,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “I thought we wanted this to be a successful mission.”

“Well, where do you want to go?” he snapped defensively.

[...]

“Maybe someday you can make clothes for me.”

He blushed all the way down to his shoulders. “Aw…you could afford something nicer than I could make.”

“So what? I’d rather have something from a friend than from a store. Anyway, hold on—we’re ready for hyperspace. Next stop: Utapau.”
She submitted the course, pulled the throttle, and the stars stretched long and thin across the blue, cold ocean of hyperspace.

On the way, Maize figured out that she wasn’t dealing with two of the galaxy’s most gifted, experienced pilots—not that she was one, either. She mainly knew the basics, but she taught Karr and RZ-7 what she could. The droid, for his part, found the cruiser’s programming tutorials and busied himself with the finer points of space travel.

“Once I have all the schematics uploaded, I ought to be able to manage this craft without any difficulty. In case you were to become incapacitated, Captain.”

She nodded. “Captain. I like it.”

“What does that make me?” asked Karr.

The droid answered, “Excess baggage?”

Karr laughed. “Okay, hotshot. Don’t get too comfy in that seat.”

When they finally emerged from hyperspace, the planet Utapau loomed before them—a sphere of light green spaces and pale brown swaths, with little blue to break it up. Here and there, lights flickered beyond the sharp shadow of light, but there wasn’t much to see from so far away. Caught in orbit were nine moons—dancing gracefully around the planet and one another.

Maize announced triumphantly, “We’re here! Now where do we go? It’s not a huge planet, but it’s still…I mean, it’s a planet. If your headaches are tingling or whatever, give me some further direction.” She pulled up a data stream with general facts about what could be found on the surface, plus cities, towns, settlements, and outposts.


- Force Collector, Chapter 6


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“She also has a father who doesn’t mind using First Order resources to bring her home. If he wanted to send her away to some boarding academy for young criminals, he could’ve done that a long time ago.”

The droid nodded and walked along beside him, and when they got back to the ship, they spent another hour or two between them—making sure they had a good, solid idea of how it worked. Maize had told them everything she knew, and she’d flown just fine. Surely the pair of them could do the same.

“I’ve updated my navigational protocols to the fullest extent possible,” RZ-7 assured him.

“And I was listening really hard when Maize was talking.”

The droid dipped his head. “I bet you were.”

“Very funny. I can’t help it if we get along really well.”

“I was just making the observation that if you were searching for the romantic in you as opposed to the Jedi in you, we’d have already accomplished our mission.”

Karr laughed. “I guess we would have. But then again, where’s the fun in that? Now let’s fire this baby up!”
The droid positioned himself in the copilot’s seat and buckled in.

“Will do, sir. And I’ve already located the coordinates of Oba Diah and its desert moon.”

“Excellent!”

Karr slipped into the pilot’s seat. He wasn’t 100 percent confident in his skills, and he didn’t know if this quest would ever amount to anything, but he couldn’t deny that it felt important. Was he in control of his destiny? Maybe, maybe not. Was he in charge of this very fancy ship? For the moment, yes.

He’d never in his life felt so free.

He’d also never felt more frightened or more lost, but he wasn’t alone and he had the Avadora’s maps to guide him.

“Let’s go, Arzee. Let’s see if we can find a lone Jedi, lost on a moon with no name. We can do that, right? It’s not a feather in a sandstorm, is it?”

“Not at all, sir,” the droid replied.

Karr knew it was a lie. But he let it go. “This is going to be amazing.”

“Indeed, it will be, sir. But soon, you should get some rest. The galaxy is large, and you are only human.”

Karr didn’t want to rest. He wanted to continue adventuring—but the droid was right, and Karr was exhausted. So after they successfully launched the ship into the atmosphere, which was no small feat considering its novice pilots, he decided it was time to nap and to dream. And to remember.

[...]

By the time Karr and RZ-7 emerged from hyperspace, they found themselves on the Kessel Run, a specific route usually used by smugglers to transport spices to unsavory customers.

“I feel we might be out of our element here, sir,” RZ-7 said.

“All the better. We already know what we know. Let’s start learning things we don’t know.”

“I’d like to point out, sir, that I am fluent in many languages, but in none of them does that make any sense. Also we’re coming up on Oba Diah and its moon.”

The two travelers pored over the maps they were able to download. Not a great deal of survey work had ever happened on the sad little moon, and enough of it was classified by various militaries over the years that it all felt woefully incomplete.

“But look, right there. That’s a canyon, right?” Karr stared closely at the holomap.

“I see cliffs, yes. I think?”

“Well, the rest of the planet is as smooth as an Umbaran’s scalp, so let’s start there.”

The droid hesitated. “What about the criminals that Pyke warned us about? Do you think this is one of their settlements?” He indicated a little encampment a few klicks to the east.

Karr enlarged the map as big as he could make it. “I can’t tell. On these images, it almost looks abandoned, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s hope it is. If it’s not, this trip may not go as smoothly as the others have so far.”

He tried not to let the dire possibilities dampen his spirits. “Let’s set down on the other side of the canyon. Even if it’s not an empty settlement over there, maybe no one will see us.”

“Very good, sir, but let’s be careful. This will be your first landing.”

“I hear that any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”

The droid said, “I tend to set a higher bar, but I guess that is true. However, if we can’t also fly away from this landing, it’ll mean we’ve crashed on a desert moon that might be abandoned or might be crawling with criminals.”

“I hate it when you’re right. Your diagnostics are up to date?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’ve read every manual I could find in this thing, so between us, we’re about as prepared as we’re going to get.”

“Very confidence-inspiring, sir.”

“Thanks, Arzee. Now submitting coordinates to…a spot that looks like it might be a decent place to set down. I guess.”

Ten minutes later, the Avadora dropped with only a couple of bumps and bounces at the bottom of the canyon’s north edge—in a clearing that once might have been a waterway or might have only been a wide, shallow sinkhole that settled into dust.

“That was…not as smooth as I had in mind, but we can walk away—so I’m calling it good.” Karr unbuckled himself from the pilot’s seat and stumbled before getting his footing. The ship had landed on ground that wasn’t quite level, and the boy was rattled from his first experience bringing a starship to a planet’s surface. Even a week before, he would’ve never dreamed it was possible. Now he was chasing Jedi rumors from system to system.

Even though he was still frightened and permanently overwhelmed, he grinned from ear to ear.

“Systems seem to be sound, and no damage is reported from the engines or shields, so I’d call it a success, as well.” The droid unfastened his safety belt and wobbled, then steadied himself. “Scanning for fragments of heavy metals, or other signs of wreckage.”

“Cross your fingers for Jedi remnants, not weird crime-family business.”

“If I had traversable phalanges, I would absolutely do that.”

Karr laughed. “You know what I meant.”

“I did. And the ship’s scanner has picked up evidence of a crash, I believe. A few klicks to the west of here.”

“Seriously? Is it the shuttle?”

“Unclear, sir. I’m detecting pieces of metal, but nothing large.”

Karr sighed. “Well, let’s go find what we can. It’s odd but I almost wish that Pyke was wrong.”

“I understand, sir. He did have a little too much exuberance in his family’s achievement. But if we do find something that connects to the Jedi, then it’s a win-win.”

“True, true,” Karr replied as he strolled down the ramp.

Outside, the air didn’t feel too different from Jakku—hot, dry, and flecked with blown bits of sand and gravel. But the canyon offered a little protection and a lot of shadow, so it wasn’t quite so bad as the desert land from which they’d come. At his hip, Karr wore a canteen he’d found in the ship’s tiny galley area that didn’t remotely qualify as a kitchen; on his face, he had a protective visor he’d found stashed under a seat—so the glare didn’t blind him. He’d taken every precaution possible, but it still didn’t feel like enough.


- Force Collector, Chapters 11 and 12


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