For Stellan, the split came in a terrible shuddering of the floors and walls of the quartermaster’s office, the screeching alarms of networked astromechs, and a flickering of the lights. He braced himself against his desk, closing his eyes against the wave of fear and pain he felt reverberating from almost every living thing aboard the station—
—followed by something even worse: the knowledge that half of those lives were already growing more distant as the two parts of the station fell apart.
JJ-5145 had wobbled on his spherical base but was already righted. “It appears that the station has divided into halves,” he said with totally incongruous cheer.
This undeniable truth was written in every graph, scan, and line of data that surrounded them, but it was an almost impossibly difficult thing to accept. Stellan forced himself to say the words: “Yes. Starlight has broken in two.”
A small, shaky holo shone from one of the astromechs: their half of Starlight, as indicated by their scans. The bottom half of the station, Stellan’s half, had taken the medical tower with it in the divide. Otherwise, the top of Starlight Beacon was entirely blank. What was happening to Maru? To Avar? No way to know, at this point. Stellan had to let it go.
He stood in the quartermaster’s office amid the nest of networked astromechs who had now fallen all but silent. The droids had less to report. Everything felt still and steady again—for the moment. Stellan wondered if the many people huddled in the docking bay thought something good had happened. Maybe they believed the worst was over. If so, he envied them.
“Recalculating organizational needs based on new station parameters,” JJ-5145 said. “We have lost some critical ship functions, but other systems may operate more efficiently for a time, as they now only need to service half of the station. Of course, those systems will soon cease to operate entirely, but that would be hours from this point, or upon our crashing onto the planet’s surface.”
“That’s not much of a bright side, Forfive.” But the mention of the crash sparked another idea for Stellan: Could breaking apart have altered either half’s trajectory, preventing the crash? Maybe even both halves?
It was a slim hope, and a short-lived one. Stellan tapped the screen that told the tale: two arcs, rather than just one, each headed toward Eiram’s surface. The top section would actually hit the atmosphere first, and far too soon. This bottom section of the station would follow it shortly thereafter.
JJ-5145’s idea about some station systems being able to work more efficiently appeared to have been borne out. Auxiliary life support, though still under great strain, had rebounded slightly. At least that bought them some repair time. But none of the other vaguely, temporarily improved functions helped them.
Except—
“The positional thrusters,” Stellan said, new energy in his voice. “They couldn’t be restored to full power, and anything less wouldn’t have helped us. But now that the thrusters only have to lift half the station, rather than the whole, we could probably stay aloft indefinitely!”
If JJ-5145 felt smug about having been correct, the droid gave no sign. “I will begin the necessary repair calculations immediately!”
Stellan felt a moment of despair for those aboard the top half of the station—without thrusters, without any way of altering their course or their fate—but he pushed it aside. Fearing for them would change nothing; mourning for them, if and when it came, would be done in its due time. From this point on he had to concentrate only on those lives he could still save.
Nan and Chancey Yarrow remained crouched in a storage area at the far rim of Starlight’s docking bay level. The terrible sound of ripping metal had ceased, as had the vibrations that had rattled Nan to the point of nausea. Still, it was hard to trust that this stage of the danger had passed.
Finally, however, Chancey got to her feet. “Okay. Sounds like Starlight Beacon lost a level, or split apart, or whatever it did, and we’re still alive.”
“They actually destroyed it.” Nan felt something almost like reverence. Who could doubt Marchion Ro now?
Chancey, on the other hand, didn’t seem interested in the big picture. “Right now things feel stable, but we can’t assume that they are. My guess is this station, or what remains of it, only has so long left before it falls apart completely. Our best bet is to grab an escape pod, make our way to Eiram, and take it from there.”
“We’ll want weapons,” Nan said. “Because we won’t be the only ones trying for an escape pod.”
“The big question is whether any pods are left. They might already have launched.” Chancey considered for a second. “Maybe nobody else can reach the pods. We’ll have to hope so, anyway. Otherwise, we’re even more kriffed than I thought.”
Nan felt a quiver of fear in her belly but suppressed it. She would bear witness to Marchion Ro’s greatest triumph and live to tell the tale.
Although only scant minutes had passed since the station’s breakup, people from the stranded ships in the main docking bay had already ventured out to ask what had happened and demand answers. Bell wished he had more to give them.
“Are we no longer headed for the planet’s surface?” Joss Adren asked. “Did that maybe shift our trajectory?”
“How long can we remain airtight?” This was from a small Twi’lek with green skin and eyes enormous with fright. “How do we know it hasn’t been compromised?”
Koley Linn demanded, “Why aren’t you getting us out of here?”
Burryaga growled for everyone to stay calm. Either he expressed himself well, or people were naturally intimidated by enormous growling Wookiees, because the crowd settled somewhat.
However, Koley Linn was less subdued than most. “My question stands. All right, the escape pods aren’t working. The docking bay doors aren’t working. But you’re the Jedi. You’re supposed to be capable of working miracles, moving things with just your minds. So why don’t you use the Force or whatever you call it to open the docking bay doors?”
It was a good question, one that unfortunately had a depressing answer. “Because it’s not just a matter of opening the doors,” Bell said. “Smaller containment fields are working, but we haven’t been able to activate larger ones—like, docking-bay-sized ones. So we’d have to use the Force to hold in all the breathable air to keep from destabilizing the station, maybe even killing everyone else on board. Doing either of those things would be difficult, even for us. Doing both of them at the same time is impossible.”
Maybe it wouldn’t be, Bell thought, if we had a chance to meditate. If we could get more than a handful of overworked Jedi Knights together at once. And if the disturbance in the Force on this station finally vanished. But that’s not happening.
“Some miracle workers you are,” Koley said before stalking off. The others, however, seemed to hear him, and the crowd quieted—at least, for the moment.
As soon as Bell and Burryaga had been left alone for a second, they hurried together toward one of the still-functioning (mostly) terminals. Bell knew they shared the same concern. No doubt Stellan Gios would fill them in shortly, but they had to know what had become of the medical tower. Had it been ripped away in the breakup, too?
I can’t lose another Master, Bell thought. And Ember—Ember has to be so scared—
Then the screen lit up with an image of what remained of Starlight Beacon. To virtually anyone else, this would have been a portrait of pure destruction. But Bell laughed out loud as Burryaga cheered.
“They’re still with us!” Bell said. “We can still get to them.”
Before long, he’d be reunited with his charhound—he’d help care for the helpless injured—and he would save Indeera Stokes.
Being a Jedi involved performing many tasks that were generally considered “heroic”—but Elzar had rarely felt like more of a hero than he did the moment he reentered the docking bay hauling a repulsor pallet of power cells. It wasn’t just the stranded passengers who began whooping and cheering; Nib Assek looked like she might kiss him. “You made it,” Nib said breathlessly. “We can stabilize auxiliary life support!”
“Maybe,” Elzar said. He couldn’t share in the good cheer—the Force alone knew what was happening to the top half of that station and everyone aboard it, including Avar Kriss—but he had something productive to do and needed to focus on that, rather than on the anger he felt about what the Nihil had done to Starlight. “What’s our full status?”
This came in a briefing not five minutes later, in which Stellan, Elzar, and Nib gathered in the quartermaster’s office to go over what data JJ-5145 and the astromechs had been able to collect. Elzar felt as though he were standing in a nest of wires as the small, crude hologram appeared in the center of the room.
“It appears that this is what remains of Starlight,” Stellan said. The ragged lower half of the station, outlined in bluish light, rotated in midair before them all. “Our trajectory, although altered, still takes us within the pull of Eiram’s gravity and onto their surface in just under two and a half hours. But we have a better chance of activating the positional thrusters now—not at full capacity, which has been rendered impossible, but at enough strength to keep this station from crashing for days or even weeks.”
“Somebody will reach us by then,” Nib said with total confidence. Elzar knew she had every reason for her faith, but the saboteur-imposed silence and isolation rattled him.
“You two, join in Bell and Burryaga’s efforts with auxiliary life support. Forfive and I will work on activating the positional thrusters, if we can.” The droid swiveled about, apparently in pride at his important assignment. “Once those two things have been accomplished, I believe we can hold out until help arrives from the Republic.”
“We have hope again,” Elzar said, acknowledging Stellan with a nod. “But wait—where’s Orla?”
“Putting out other fires. Figuratively, maybe literally.” Nib was heading toward the door before Elzar was done speaking. “I’ll bring her back as soon as possible.”
Elzar didn’t feel as confident about anyone’s safety at this point. Could Orla have been lost in the station’s breakup? Elzar felt a ragged jab of worry for his mentor.
But Stellan was correct. They had to optimize their best chances. For the moment, that meant stabilizing life support, and having faith. Besides, if anyone could take care of herself, it was Orla Jareni.
The chatter traveling through the docking bay (where gossip was rapidly approaching hyperspace speeds) was that the situation was looking up thanks to more power cells. Affie didn’t know how these people were getting “good news” from the fact that they were on a space station that had just split in two.
Thanks to her earlier experiences with the Jedi, in particular her friendship with Orla Jareni, Affie trusted them more than some did in this region of space. But as Leox had taught her, the best results came when you both trusted with an open heart and watched your own damn back.
So, while the others milled around discussing the new possibilities and the Jedi attended some super special meeting, Affie set out in search of escape pods.
The escape pods weren’t working, the Jedi said. But the Jedi had also believed communications weren’t working when they were. Was it such a stretch to wonder whether the escape pods might be in better shape than the computers claimed?
A spacefarer since her infancy, Affie knew how a variety of escape pods worked. There might be ways to rig even a sabotaged pod. She’d do whatever it took to make sure Leox got to safety.
But Geode wouldn’t fit into an escape pod…
The doors on the pods are too small for anyone who can’t bend or crouch, but maybe he could go out an air lock, Affie thought as she made her way through a darkened, debris-scattered corridor on the far outer rim of the docking bay level. He’d be okay for a good long while. We’d just have to make sure somebody could pick him up.
(Vintians rarely embraced space travel, preferring to remain settled on Vint. However, the few who took it up, like Geode, were in demand largely because of their extreme sturdiness, which fell on the outer edge of what biological life-forms were capable of. An hour or two in the void of space would do a Vintian no harm. What could harm them, however, was gravity. If Geode fell into Eiram’s atmosphere and then to its surface, he would die as surely as any human who plummeted from such a height.)
As she considered the possibilities, Affie was almost completely lost in thought—but snapped back to the present when she heard voices coming from up ahead. Hushed voices, the words of those who didn’t wish to be overheard.
She crouched close to the wall and crept forward, triply careful of the clutter strewn at her feet. Thanks to the curve in the corridor, it took a few minutes for her to get close enough to see the speakers: two human women, or a woman and a girl, who were shining a glow rod ahead of them but—luckily—not looking back.
The woman said, “If I remember the schematics right, there ought to be a few pods up ahead.”
So, Affie wasn’t the only one who wanted advance info about the escape pods. Well, fair was fair. She opened her mouth to call out to them—best to work as a team—when she heard the younger woman say, “I just hope they haven’t been launched already.”
I know that voice, Affie realized as her gut clenched. That’s Nan! That’s one of the Nihil!
It had been months since the Vessel had been stranded on the Amaxine station, but Affie would never forget the sense of shock and betrayal she’d felt upon learning that two of the others stranded there had been Nihil. Nan had been one of them: small as a child, apparently sweetly curious about the Republic, so eager to be friendly to all of them but especially to the Jedi. In other words, Nan had played them all expertly, which was reason enough not to forgive her.
But since Nan had apparently been one of the ones who helped blow up Starlight Beacon—
Affie paused, stooped to the floor, and carefully picked up a long metal pole that had fallen there. She didn’t intend to let Nan walk away from this, and that meant she needed to be ready to fight.
In days to come, Stellan suspected, he’d be uncomfortable with the way he’d taken over the Vessel as a makeshift communications hub. For the moment, however, he remained focused on the call that had just come in.
“Master Gios, we grieve with you in this terrible time. We wish to be of what assistance we can.” Queen Thandeka of Eiram, in holographic form, floated in the ship’s cockpit. “However, Queen Dima and I must think of our planet and our people. Our strategists’ analyses suggest that the top half of the station—having no positional thrusters—is likely to come in so fast that it will burn up on its descent through our atmosphere.”
Maru, Stellan thought. Avar. The reality of it pierced him anew.
Queen Thandeka continued, “If you’re able to reactivate the thrusters in time, your half of the station may survive. But if you cannot, it seems likely to strike one of our planet’s largest cities, located on the coast of our northernmost continent. It looks as if…as if the only way to save that city’s inhabitants is by shooting the station down.”
“By blasting us to atoms, you mean.” Stellan couldn’t blame the woman. Any good leader would have to consider this option.
She looked stricken. “Please know that this is our last-ditch option. We would never—not if any other possibilities—”
“You need not apologize,” he replied. “If it comes down to sacrificing the hundreds of lives on this half of the station to save many thousands on the planet’s surface, then that is what you must do. But it won’t come to that.”
“Are you certain?” Queen Thandeka’s hands were clasped in front of her, fidgety with worry.
Stellan shrugged. “Absolutely certain? No. But I know the Jedi aboard this station. I know what they’re capable of. What we’re capable of. We will not let Starlight fall. You have already trusted in us, Queen Thandeka. I must ask you to do so again. Trust us to save this station.”
She hesitated—but only for a moment. Lifting her chin, she said, “Then we are proud to again put our faith in the Jedi.”
Stellan only hoped the Jedi deserved her faith.