Some said that consciousness was the galaxy’s way of beholding itself. Through Leox Gyasi’s eyes, the galaxy looked upon itself with great satisfaction.
Not that he didn’t see the galaxy also had a hell of a lot of things wrong with it. But Leox recognized the gift he had been given in being alive, so he didn’t waste time on worry or despair. If something was wrong and he could help, he would. If a crisis came, he’d deal with it then. Otherwise each day was one to be savored.
Geode understood this. Leox figured that was one of the reasons they got on so well. Affie Hollow…well, she was still learning.
“I don’t like this,” she said as they cruised through their final seconds of hyperspace flight. “The Nihil make me want to stay safe here forever.”
“Traveling without a destination is among the world’s most perfect pastimes,” Leox said. “But at the moment, we have a passenger run to finish.”
Affie frowned as she tugged her long brown-black hair into a tail—a sign that her inner self was readier to complete the voyage than her consciousness was. (Leox was a big believer in the inner self.) She said, “Doesn’t it seem like Starlight is the last place we ought to go? It’s the symbol of the Republic in this area, the center of the Jedi presence—that makes it the place the Nihil hate most of all.”
“First of all, according to the Jedi, what we’re seeing is the Nihil’s last gasp. So they won’t be trouble for much longer. Second, Starlight’s the center of Republic attention in that part of the galaxy,” Leox replied. “If whatever’s left of the Nihil try to raid that place, the Republic’s gonna give them a kick in the teeth. Or fangs, or gills, whatever the Nihil in question’s got going on. No, they’re not coming to Starlight unless they’ve got something a hell of a lot craftier in mind.”
“Sometimes you do this thing where you think you’re helping, but you’re definitely not,” Affie pointed out.
“Either way, Little Bit, it’s time to drop out of here. Ready, Geode?”
Geode’s answer came in the form of the slight shudder of the Vessel leaving hyperspace. The electric blue surrounding them instantly shifted to black. In the distance shone Starlight Beacon—
—and in the nearer distance they saw a ship, a tiny Japealean one-pilot cutter struggling to move forward. Even from here, Leox could tell one of its engines had blown, and the other one wasn’t in great shape.
Affie flicked on the comms before Leox’s hand could move. “This is the Vessel. Are you in need of assistance?”
“Yes, please—” The woman from the Japealean cutter coughed. She sounded exhausted. “—Took fire from the Nihil—just when you think the kriffers are gone for good—”
At the same instant, Leox and Affie looked down at the readouts. Geode already had the analysis on-screen for them: The ship truly was what it appeared to be, genuinely quite damaged, and the pilot on board was indeed alone. “On our way,” Leox said as he angled the ship toward the injured Japealean craft.
Each of the three crewmembers knew what to do without any discussion among them. This was a standard tow job, the same as it would be for cargo containers in space. (Orbital containers were often used by those who didn’t want to go through standard spaceport checks. Leox had handled a lot of that kind of cargo back in the bad old days.) Geode brought up precision coordinates, Leox readied the tow cable, and Affie took the controls in hand and fired.
The cable magnetically locked to the Japealean cutter with a satisfying thunk. Leox and Affie shared a quick smile before beginning to slowly move forward, passing over the cutter and preparing to lead.
At the very moment the cutter was directly below them, an explosion rocked the Vessel. Red lights bloomed across the ship’s controls in one awful wave.
“What the—” Leox hit the comm. “You still alive down there?”
After a few seconds of static, the Japealean pilot whispered, “other…other engine blew…”
So it had. Unfortunately, in doing so, it seemed to have flung metal debris into the body of the Vessel itself. Their ship remained airtight, which Leox knew on account of their not being in the process of dying horribly that exact second. But it looked like nearly everything else about the ship had taken damage, to varying degrees. Worst of all: “Hyperdrive is offline.”
Affie bit her lower lip, then swiftly regained her cool. “Okay. At least this happened within easy distance of a repair port.”
Orla Jareni and Elzar Mann appeared at the cockpit doorway, calm in that preternatural way the Jedi had, but definitely alert. “What happened?” Orla said.
“We paid a little rent on our time in the universe.” Leox gestured toward the Japealean craft, still visible at the corner of the cockpit. “Did a good deed, took some shrapnel for it. Hopefully nothing we can’t fix at Starlight.”
“Anything you need,” Elzar promised.
Leox remembered what Affie had said about Starlight Beacon being a target for the Nihil. If he were the worrying kind, he would’ve seen this as a bad omen.
As it was—well, bad omen or not, they had only one path they could take. Leox intended to take it with a smile.
Knowing that several dozen people had sought help at Starlight after the recent Nihil activity, Elzar Mann had readied himself for a little more bustle than Starlight Beacon generally saw. Yet the sight of the station’s docking bay—normally ordered and tidy, to Estala Maru’s most exacting specifications—surprised him with its disarray. Several ships of all kinds filled the majority of the available space. Once the Vessel settled in, very little space remained in the bay.
As Elzar and Orla led the group off the ship, his attentions shifted from the other spacecraft to the many people gathered in and around them. Most of them were hard at work on repairs—enough of them that Elzar suddenly wondered whether many, or any, spare parts remained.
“I promised you help,” Elzar said to Affie Hollow. “I only hope we still have it to give.”
“We’ll manage.” Affie might have been only a seventeen-year-old girl, but she had the knowing smile of a traveler who’s spent her life among the stars. “There’s not much we can’t fix, and we have a few supplies of our own.”
“I’ve got an old-fashioned tool kit in here somewhere,” Leox verified. “We can even refit our own couplings, if it comes to it.”
Orla raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know anyone made their own couplings any longer.”
“What can I say?” Leox’s grin widened. “I’m an old-fashioned kinda guy.”
Affie added, “We have plenty of parts, Geode’s staying on board to test every system, and Leox—Leox? You okay?”
Leox Gyasi was no longer smiling. Instead he had become one of the many staring into the middle distance, but Elzar was pretty sure Leox was staring at something—or someone—in particular. The only reply Leox gave was, “Okay.”
Affie frowned in his direction. Elzar wondered whether he should ask more questions, but at that moment two familiar figures bounded up. Burryaga yowled in welcome as Bell Zettifar raised a hand in greeting. “Master Elzar, it’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you too, you two.” Elzar grinned and stooped to pet the charhound that had just bounded to his side. “Excuse me, Ember. You three.”
Orla greeted them, but absentmindedly; already she was moving on to the next task. Her white robes seemed almost to glow as she strode confidently forward. “I’m not a bad hand with ship repairs, if help is needed there.”
Burryaga growled that Master Gios would no doubt want to see them first. “That makes sense,” Elzar said. “Let’s go.”
“Ms. Hollow, Mr. Gyasi.” Orla turned to them with a smile. “Please let us know if we can assist you in any way.”
Affie nodded. Leox kept staring.
Something’s wrong there, Elzar thought. But there was no time to worry about what, and after all, it was probably Leox Gyasi’s own business.
As soon as the Jedi had cleared out, Affie turned back toward Leox. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Bad news,” he said, gesturing toward one corner of the docking bay.
Affie’s gaze followed, and she laid eyes on it. “Oh no. Oh, no.”
“I’d know that ship anywhere.” For once, the ease had left Leox entirely; his wiry body was as tense as a bow pulled taut with an arrow. “That’s the Ace of Staves.”
“Obviously I realize that,” Affie said. “As indicated by my repeating ‘oh no’ a lot of times.”
“Sorry. Just making myself face it.”
The Ace of Staves meant pilot Koley Linn. And Koley Linn meant trouble.
Affie had met Linn on only half a dozen occasions, each of them unpleasant in the extreme. He’d preemptively bought up the spaceport’s spare fuel on the tiny world of Todouhar, stranding the Vessel for three extra days; then he’d tried to steal their cargo on Kennerla, very nearly making it so they had to pay to even be there. Both she and Leox were pretty sure he’d fouled the waters for them in other spaceports, too.
And those were only the issues Affie personally knew about. The bad blood between Leox and Koley Linn predated her time aboard the Vessel. Leox had never shared the details, and Affie had never pried for more information—though, she realized, that might be about to change.
Bad had gone to worse after the collapse of the Byne Guild. Although Koley Linn had not truly been a member, he had worked with the guild regularly. When Affie had turned in her mother, and the guild crumbled, it had disrupted Linn’s credit flow enough to royally tick him off. As such, Affie had taken her place alongside Leox on Koley Linn’s hit list.
Affie lay one hand on Leox’s arm as she said, in a low voice, “I know you won’t start anything, but—”
“—But I can damn sure finish it,” he replied, never taking his eyes off the Ace of Staves.
“But if we have to interact with him at all, can you leave that to Geode? I know he doesn’t like Linn any more than we do, but Linn never can get a rise out of him.” Not that the man hadn’t tried. It took more than one red-haired jerk to scrape their navigator’s flinty surface.
“I will if we get the choice.” Leox finally turned to Affie then, and he smiled—but it was a rueful, wary expression. “Though Koley Linn doesn’t always leave us with a choice.”
Bell smiled as Ember made her way along with the party of Jedi, as if she were one of them, at least in her own mind. Once in a while Stellan Gios gently reprimanded him when his charhound hung around on duty; even Avar Kriss sometimes frowned. But Nib Assek had always been friendly with Ember, and as for the recent arrivals, Elzar Mann grinned and Orla Jareni even whistled, which made Ember cock her head as she came up to Burryaga’s side. (Burry had rapidly become a favorite of the charhound’s, and vice versa. Maybe it was a fur-solidarity kind of thing.)
I think people who like pets are more in touch with the Force, Bell thought. Then he wondered whether that was a small-minded way to look at things—and a very convenient one, for the guardian of a charhound. Still, wasn’t there something to it? A friendship with an entirely different sort of life-form, one with which there could be no direct communication—wasn’t that a sign that your spirit was welcoming to the Force in whatever form it took?
In the far distance of a side corridor, Bell glimpsed a small work crew in dark coveralls: a Pau’an, an Ithorian, and a human, all bustling from one job to the next. No surprise they were busy.
Orla let the Force guide her through the corridors; she encountered droids as she went, but no living beings. There was a definite destination—perhaps the main cargo bay, she thought—but the closer she came to it, the more uncertain she was of her own conclusions. The Force usually guided her steps more surely.
Footfalls along another corridor made her tense, and she whirled around to see another Jedi emerging from the side. He was a few years younger than her, quite tall, with messy brown hair and a friendly smile. Orla liked him on sight.
“You feel it too, huh?” the Jedi said, instead of hello.
“Definitely. Or I did. The closer I get, the farther away I feel.” Orla shook her head as if to clear it. “By the way, I’m Orla Jareni.”
This won her a grin. “The Wayseeker! I’ve heard a lot about you. My name’s Regald Coll.”
“And what brings you here, Regald?” She said it with a smile, the better to defuse the tension that threatened to curl around her mind. “The same sense of—” She trailed off as the true weight of what she felt sank in. “This…insistent dread?”
Regald hesitated. “I’m actually trying to help one of my comrades by proving that there isn’t some weird source of insistent dread on board Starlight, that we’re all just tired and on edge…but you asking that question kind of blows a hole in my theory.”
They had by this time reached the cargo bay. Its doors slid open to reveal—nothing but cargo ships sitting or hovering in their berths, everything precisely as it should be. Orla no longer felt as certain that this was the correct destination, but surely it had some meaning. She turned to a nearby astromech droid. “Can you bring up a complete manifest?”
With a whistle, the little astromech projected the full, lengthy screen. Orla ran her fingers along it, the tips dipping into the light, as she searched them.
“Seeing any trouble?” Regald asked.
“No. I mean, not unless you count the fact that we have not one but two ships here fool enough to haul rathtars.” Orla shrugged. “They’re the worst. But rathtars aren’t responsible for what we’re feeling.”
Regald tried to make light of it. “Oh, come on, they might be bad, but the worst? More awful than a sarlacc? Badder than a rancor?”
“A small pastime of mine is learning the literary collective names of things,” Orla said. “You know, like a grove of Wookiees or a tinker of droids?”
“Or a bulge of Hutts.” Regald nodded. “I admit, I’ve always liked an illumination of Jedi.”
“Well, the collective name for these guys is a remorse of rathtars.” She gave him a look. “They weren’t given that moniker lightly.”
Maybe the issue is the rathtars, Orla thought. Maybe they’re not being properly contained. If rathtars got loose aboard Starlight, that would create a whole new level of chaos. We should check and see. But—that makes no sense, rathtars don’t influence the Force more or less than any other living creature—
Orla’s personal comlink chirped, jerking her back into the present. “Jareni here.”
“Welcome to Starlight, Orla.” Stellan’s voice sounded warmer than she would’ve expected. Why was it so difficult, sometimes, to remember that they truly liked and respected each other?
Well. There were reasons. But Orla smiled as she said, “Much appreciated, Stellan. A fine station you have here.”
“I’d appreciate the chance to talk with you about Elzar’s progress—without betraying any confidences, of course—”
“He’s your friend. You worry. I get it.” Orla adjusted her pale robes, already preparing for the meeting. “I can tell you a little bit.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Stellan replied, signing out. That meant he wanted to see her now.
And there was no reason not to go. Orla’s trip to this cargo bay had resulted in nothing but some vague, unfounded worries about rathtar storage. Regald Coll, too, seemed nonplussed by their very ordinary surroundings. He shrugged, falling into step beside her as she left the bay.
I’ll investigate more later, Orla decided. Maybe my head will be clearer. At present, her connection to the Force was too confused for her to be sure of her thinking. Why was that happening? What would have the ability to do that to a Jedi?
Sooner or later—hopefully sooner—Orla intended to find out.