The cold black of space and the fiery orange of the planet Yavin flashed by at a dizzying rate. This was the view that Gil 'Drifter' Viray saw out of the cockpit of his snub fighter, as he tumbled through space. Drifter's mission had almost finished, he had only to make it back to his base on the fourth moon so that he could join the others in the victory celebrations. That was until his Xwing had been caught in the blast of the exploding Death Star. Now his only mission was survival, as he tried frantically to take control of his ship. "I need more power to the maneuvering thrusters before I can stop this roll.... Increase the shield strength, there's a lot of small debris hitting us..... oh and signal the base again, give them a current damage report and see where that rescue ship's got to. By the Emperors black bones, we're gonna need some help to get out of this one!" Drifter continued to wrestle with the controls whilst Rocket, his astromech droid, attempted to squeeze more power out of the damaged ship. A text message from Rocket flashed across the central display, in front of Drifter. [LARGE PIECE OF DEBRIS ON COLLISION COURSE, IMPACT IN 22 SECONDS] "Sithspawn! Lay in an emergency hyperspace escape route and jump as soon as you can!..... No I don't care where, just stay in system. Hurry Rocket, get us out of here!" [IMPACT IN 10,9,8: JUMP COORDINATES LOCKED IN, ENGAGING HYPERDRIVE NOW] The stars elongated around Drifter as his Incom T65 fighter entered hyperspace. Something was very wrong! "Rocket! Why haven't we reverted to real space? I thought I said to stay in this system, that should only be a second or two in hyperspace!" Rocket's reply filled Drifter with utter dread! [NAVICOMPUTER SEVERELY DAMAGED, UNABLE TO REVERT TO REAL SPACE AT THIS TIME. ATTEMPTING TO DIAGNOSE FAULT] Days later, after all Drifter's emergency supplies had run out, Rocket finally reported that they could revert to real space, but that the hyperdrive and the navicomputer may well be damaged beyond repair by the stresses of reversion. Drifter guessed that by now he and Rocket were beyond Imperial controlled space, but the truth was that they had flown beyond the edges of known space and were now in uncharted space. 'Rocket, revert to real space on my mark in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...REVERT!' Drifter watched as the lines of hyperspace turned in to the tiny points of light of normal space. Drifter breathed a sigh of relief. 'Rocket, scan local space for anyone who can help us, or try and find us a planet we can set down on.'
