Captain Northstar Lightwalker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The brine gauge dropped below a quarter tank, and Captain Northstar Lightwalker felt the ship's hum thin out under his boots. He was a dill pickle in a captain's coat, standing on the bridge of a starship he had built to look like the one his grandfather kept on a shelf. That model was bolted above his bunk now. The ship below him ran on Force-infused brine, and no other ship in the fleet did. Without more brine, the USS Brine would drift, and the search for a new world where no pickle had gone would end in a quiet, floating death. His navigator rolled to the console, a green-domed droid built along the lines of an old R2 unit. R6-C5 was the only crew member who did not flinch when the lights browned out. "Range to the nearest fuel station," Lightwalker said. "Six hours," R6-C5 said. "At current draw, we have four." "Options." "One. I ran three simulations. The third says cut life support to the lower decks and coast in." "No." "Then one option remains." R6-C5 pivoted its dome toward the rear of the bridge. A green oval of light was already tearing open the air behind the captain's chair. Out stepped another pickle in a white coat, portal gun still humming in his glove. Pickle Rick did not ask permission to be there. He never had. "Heard your reactor coughing three dimensions over," Pickle Rick said. He grinned like the emergency was a joke only he understood. "You want a shortcut or you want to die pretty?" Lightwalker had known him long enough to distrust both offers. "Shortcut to where." "Fuel hub. Big ring station, brine pumps, glowing green pipes. I've been. They don't like me. They'll like you." R6-C5's dome clicked. "I cannot plot a course through a portal I did not model." "Then don't plot it," Pickle Rick said. "Ride it." Lightwalker closed his eyes. He felt the low thrum of the brine in the walls, the way his grandfather had once told him to feel a room before he walked into it. The Force moved through the ship like a slow tide, and the tide was pulling toward the portal. "Open it wide," he said. "Take us in." Pickle Rick fired. The green oval swallowed the bridge windows. The USS Brine lurched, and then the stars outside were different stars, and a ringed station hung close enough to see the docking arms turning. Brine pumps glowed along its spine. R6-C5's dome swiveled to the forward screen. "Captain. They are hailing us. On a fleet channel we do not carry." Lightwalker stared at the station. Someone here already knew the name of his ship. Someone here had been waiting. "Answer it," he said.