Bell didn’t need any special empathy through the Force to understand the anguish Burryaga felt. He’d been there himself when Loden Greatstorm was lost.
Burryaga remained bent over the ashes that were the sole remains of Master Nib. His yowls of grief had quieted but not ended; he showed no signs of wanting to get up again.
Regald Coll. Orla Jareni. Now Nib Assek. Three Jedi, each one more powerful than a couple of apprentices. If this thing finds us, how long can we possibly hope to hold out against it?
At least Master Indeera had survived. If she recovered, she might be able to tell them what they were up against. But that wasn’t the only reason Bell wanted to return to the medical tower. At this time more than ever before, he felt the need to protect her. He wanted the comfort of Ember’s presence. He wanted to be back in a place with other people, where the problems he faced were known and tangible.
The corridor in which they stood remained forbiddingly murky. It seemed to Bell that in the distance—amid a patch of dust shaken loose from collapsing metalwork—there was some sort of a track, the footprint of something very large. Was that the attacker? Or was it just a member of some larger sentient species aboard?
All Bell knew was that investigating this thing got people killed. Yes, they needed the truth, but at this point, the priority had to be staying alive, saving others—and letting Masters Stellan and Elzar know what had happened here.
First he had to take care of his friend.
“Burryaga?” Bell’s voice was soft. “We need to go report this.”
Burryaga’s plaintive sounds of grief stilled, but he didn’t move. He stared down at the ashes that lay before them as if the intensity of his attention could somehow resurrect Nib Assek.
There was no describing the grief that came from losing a Master. Bell had carried it ever since Loden Greatstorm’s initial abduction by the Nihil; then the pain had redoubled upon learning how he had failed his late Master, not searching for him, allowing him to be tortured grotesquely by the Nihil. His next Master, Indeera Stokes, at that moment lay in the medical tower, insensate, suspended between life and death. So he knew by heart the terrible shock and loss that no doubt nearly paralyzed Burryaga.
Yet for Burryaga’s sake, Bell could glimpse the greater perspective that had so often eluded him with his own losses.
Bell knelt beside the Wookiee. “She’d want us to warn the others. She’d urge us not to grieve. She’d tell us to do our duty.” Just as Master Loden would. Just like Master Stokes will, if she wakes from this.
Burryaga didn’t react at first. Bell wondered if he’d been heard. But then Burryaga rose to his feet, ready at last to walk away from his Master.
No pill droids could be spared from the medical tower, plus traveling to and from it was difficult enough—and besides, Elzar figured that the kind of help Stellan needed wasn’t the sort a pill droid could dispense.
The quartermaster’s office had already been transformed into a makeshift Hub; next it had become another medbay, one dedicated to Force-related injuries. Elzar had found enough emergency blankets to fashion a bed for Stellan to rest upon, in the corner, almost entirely walled off by the still-bleeping astromechs.
Stellan had remained nearly inert throughout Elzar’s preparations; the lone move he made to help himself was to walk to the bed rather than having to be carried. His eyes remained fixed on something that could no longer be seen.
He needs a temple healer, Elzar thought as he stood there, looking down at where Stellan lay. Or even someone more empathetic—Avar would know what to do—
At that moment he was startled by the sound of the doors sliding open. Elzar was relieved to see Burryaga and Bell Zettifar, but only for the second it took him to read the expressions on their faces. “Oh no,” he said. “Not Orla, too?”
“And Nib Assek as well.” Bell lowered his head.
Both of them, gone? “Did you see what happened?”
Burryaga shook his head. Bell added, “We’d split up, which I think was a mistake we shouldn’t repeat.”
Elzar felt queasy. Orla had been, for the past two months, the buoy he clung to in a turbulent ocean. That support had been forever lost. Stellan had so badly wanted control of this station, but at its moment of greatest crisis, he had been rendered incapable of taking on that responsibility.
It’s up to me, Elzar thought.
It didn’t matter if he’d failed recently. It didn’t matter if he felt shaky, or uncertain, or alone. Duty called upon him to rise to this moment, and Elzar would be damned if he’d falter again.
If he had to step up to fill Stellan’s shoes—if he had to reach out through the Force in ways he remained unsure of—then that was what Elzar intended to do.
“All right,” he said, projecting a confidence he didn’t feel. “Something’s apparently attacking Force-users, or the Force itself. The two conclusions we can take from that? One, non-Force-users appear to be safe. None of them have reported feeling any problems at all. Two, we need to seal off the area the disturbance is originating from.”
Burryaga whined inquisitively. Bell said, “How?”
“Blast shields. Air locks. We collapse tunnels if we have to. This is hardly the time to worry about causing more damage.” Elzar ran one hand through his black hair. “And we put non-Force-users on it. They’re not endangered in the same way.”
“You mean we’re telling them everything now?” Bell said.
“Do you disagree?” Elzar hadn’t been a fan of Stellan’s decision, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand the reasons at work—or that Bell might not have something to say that would change his mind.
But Bell shook his head. “I think we should’ve done it long ago.”
Elzar gave him an encouraging smile. “Good. Then you’ll enjoy talking it through with the passengers. Besides, if they’re working on sealing off that section of the station, we can dedicate our energies to getting the positional thrusters fully online.”
“They’re working again?” Bell brightened. It felt like forever since Elzar had been able to give someone good news. “The station’s safe?”
“Not yet,” Elzar said, “but our chances just got a whole lot better. Let’s not waste them.”
Having been brought up on a peaceable world, Leox Gyasi was only vaguely familiar with the idea of a draft—but he was pretty sure he was seeing one now.
“The threat to the Jedi aboard this station is a threat to the survival of this station,” declared Elzar Mann. He stood on a small platform overlooking the docking bay, where the assembled crews had all gathered. “You need us to keep this station intact and in the air. That means we need you to seal off a large section of the station. Burryaga and Bell Zettifar will show you how.”
Two Jedi apprentices nodded in acknowledgment. Leox felt a pang of loss—they’d been told of Orla Jareni’s death, little though it meant to anyone else aboard beyond the crew of the Vessel. Surely these two kids shouldn’t be sent back into danger. Orla was tough. Anything that could take her out had to be formidable.
But it seemed it didn’t come after regular folks. Only Force-users. That meant Leox was probably safe. (Well, safe as it was possible to be on a malfunctioning chunk of a space station currently hurtling toward the ground.) And that made it his responsibility to do what he could.
“In Orla’s name,” he murmured under his breath, before stepping forward to be one of the first volunteers.
Even Koley Linn hadn’t been able to believe Leox Gyasi stupid enough to sign up for some suicide mission just on the Jedi’s say-so, but there he was, doing it. Unbelievable.
Then again, he’d been stupid enough to log hours correctly on that damn freighter, ruining it for anybody sane who wanted to profit for himself. So there was no telling what idiocy Gyasi would be up to next.
One man’s foolishness could always be another man’s opportunity, if he played his cards right. Koley prided himself on making the most out of every hand.
“You coming?”
He was startled back to the moment by the sight of a pretty woman with hair nearly as curly as his own, staring at him with her hands on her hips. Pikka Adren, he remembered. Too friendly with Gyasi for Koley’s liking. “What’s it to you?”
“Just thought, since you like talking about people so much, you might like to do something for a change,” she retorted before heading off with the others. Obviously she had no idea that Koley Linn was making plans to do a good deal.
That damn rock will stay behind to watch the ship, he thought, staring sideways at the Vessel. But it looks like most people in this bay are joining the team that’s going to collapse something or cut something off or basically waste time doing anything that isn’t getting the hell out of here.
Would that meddlesome girl Leox traveled with go on the mission, too? Koley would have to wait and see. His strategy would depend on whether he’d need to deal with her.
Regardless, as long as even a few individuals remained behind, he’d have his chance to suggest a new plan.
Nearly forty people wound up volunteering for the team, which was more than Bell had dared hope for. Certainly it was a sufficient number to get a lot of work done, and quickly. He hoped it would be quick enough.
“All right,” he called to the group, which was trooping along with him through the darkened corridors, their boots crunching against some of the smaller pieces of debris scattered there. Every being was bathed in dim yellowish emergency light, which gave them a look of unity they might not have had otherwise. “Every space station is designed to deal with potential hull breaches. In other words, there are dozens of air locks deep within the station—redundant until we activate them in case of emergency.”
Pikka Adren muttered to the rangy blond pilot she stood next to—obviously not realizing she was loud enough to be overheard—“Does the poor kid think this is our first day in space?”
Bell felt grateful that the heat flushing his cheeks didn’t show. These people have been spacefaring longer than you’ve been alive! Do them the courtesy of remembering that. “Obviously you’re all familiar with that concept. What you might not know is how to activate an internal air lock without sensors reporting a hull breach.”
“Let me guess,” said the rangy pilot, whose name was something like Leox. “We trick the sensors.”
“Normally that’s how we’d do it,” Bell agreed, “but our sensors are currently going haywire. We don’t want to confuse them any more than we already have. There’s a simple, manual release for the air locks. I’ll demonstrate on one, let you all practice on a few more, and then I’m going to leave you to it. Sound good?”
The group seemed not only willing but also eager to get started. This surprised Bell until he realized that almost all pilots were gearheads—there was nothing they loved more than learning a new trick with machinery.
Good, he thought. If they’re having fun with it, maybe they’ll work even faster. As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t seal away this section quickly enough.
Burryaga boosted Bell onto his shoulders, which was really high up. It allowed Bell to reach a small octagonal dial at the ceiling, just by the nearly invisible grooves in the wall that hid internal air lock doors. He shined a light on it so the company could see. “If you turn this in a pattern—it’s quick, once you’ve gotten the hang of it—the manual air lock kicks in. Everyone, come stand on this side of the doors and I’ll demonstrate.”
He did so. The doors slid shut with a reassuring clang, followed by the faint hiss of pressurization. Everyone nodded, and at the next lock, a Sullustan performed it successfully, albeit by using one of the service ladders instead of climbing atop Burryaga. After that, it was simple to divide everyone into teams and let them go their own ways.
“Okay, that leaves you two to take on the area nearest the cargo bay,” Bell said, issuing the final set of orders. Then he stopped and thought about it. “Wait. Wait just a second.”
Burryaga whined inquisitively—the first sign of curiosity, or any other positive emotion, he’d shown since Master Nib’s death.
Bell said, “I’m not sure, but I think I’ve got a plan.”
Ghirra Starros didn’t second-guess her choices, as a rule. She liked to say, The past is the only thing beyond your control. So don’t look back. Look ahead.
Forging an alliance with Marchion Ro—using her status as a senator to assist the Nihil, particularly in their strike against Starlight Beacon—that had been a tactical move, a way to put herself on both sides of the conflict in this new part of the Republic. Whoever won, Ghirra intended to stand with them on top. The relationship with Marchion wasn’t her primary motivator, just a pleasurable side benefit. Very, very pleasurable. But it didn’t muddy her thought; Ghirra knew what their alliance was and wasn’t. If anyone was likely to get carried away with emotion, no doubt it would be Marchion, not her.
Or so she believed, until they were together again on his ship.
Their reunion on the Gaze Electric had been every bit as passionate as Ghirra had fantasized it would be. Of course, nothing was perfect: Marchion’s attention was unavoidably divided between her and the events on Starlight; she hadn’t yet solidified her alibi for this period of time (she might not need one, but best to be careful); and his ship was oddly deserted, save for that omnipresent assistant of his, Thaya Ferr.
Did Thaya envy her? Ghirra wondered. (She liked it when people envied her.) It was easy to imagine this mousy, forgettable creature longing for the attention of such a powerful, dynamic leader. To envision her realizing, with despair, that she could never be the equal partner Marchion deserved, that her humdrum life, her utterly ordinary self, could never outshine a senator of the Republic who was skillfully playing both sides and enjoying it richly. These fantasies went so far as picturing Thaya looking down at her plain coverall in despair after seeing Ghirra’s elegant traveling robe of sea-green Nubian silk.
But Thaya Ferr showed no hint of envy. Her respect for Marchion was evident, but she seemed entirely without any romantic longing for him. She swiftly attended to any of Ghirra’s needs, when asked, then efficiently went back to completing Marchion’s trivial busywork.
So there was no rivalry to be had there, and Ghirra had enough self-awareness to know that if she wanted one—if she needed someone to oppose her and be defeated—it was a hint that maybe she wasn’t as sure about her path as she wanted to be. It is easier to believe in things when we are fighting for them.
Still, no changing the past. So Ghirra noted her internal disquiet and moved on.
After her arrival on board, and Marchion’s enthusiastic greeting, Ghirra had badly needed to rest; it felt as though she hadn’t slept in days. When she woke on the Gaze Electric, Ghirra’s first thought was that it was still “night”—even though she’d rested for some hours. Most space stations and ships approximated a diurnal cycle through gradual brightening and dimming of the lights, but Marchion, it seemed, kept his ship in a perpetual night. It was cold, too—not frigid but on the cusp of human discomfort. Perhaps that was the temperature his species preferred.
Surely it was the only reason for the chill that trembled along her skin.
Ghirra strode through the corridors, head held high. Let everybody who passed her witness the pride she felt in aiding Marchion with his greatest task of all. Let them realize who stood alone as his greatest ally.
But nobody passed her.
Her boots sounded unnaturally loud against the metal floors as Ghirra made her way to the ship’s bridge. The farther she walked, the more uneasy she became. Where was the crew?
Ghirra turned a corner, stopped short, and gasped.
Standing in front of her were two droids—but droids of no type she recognized. Their forms were humanoid, even more so than the average protocol droid, but their casings were peculiarly smooth, devoid of the usual ports and widgets. This was strange enough, but what unsettled Ghirra was the droids’ heads: They were oval, shiny, brushed so fine that they seemed to reflect her own face back at her.
Normally a droid in a corridor was busy doing something, even if just moving from task to task. But these droids stood stock-still, like sentries, in front of the doors to the bridge.
Those doors slid open, and Ghirra startled. The bridge was filled with these uncanny, unsettling droids, all of them at the stations that had formerly been occupied by Nihil warriors. Yet sitting in his captain’s chair, seemingly at ease, was Marchion Ro.
“Ah,” he said. “Ghirra. You’re awake at last.” He held out a hand for her to join him, one Ghirra hurried to take.
“Marchion, these droids…what are they?”
“They,” he said, “are the new crew of the Gaze Electric.”
Ghirra slowly looked around the bridge; the only other living being present was Thaya Ferr, tapping away at her console as though this were completely ordinary. It was anything but, as anyone else in the galaxy would’ve agreed.
Droids didn’t pilot alone. There were functions that would never, ever be entirely turned over to them, no matter how much more efficient a droid might be, or how much more quickly they could perform calculations or maneuvers. Ghirra knew she felt this more strongly than some sentients did, but she also knew most would agree with the basic point. It was as though sentients had learned, at some point in their technological development, that droids had to be kept in their place or the consequences would be dire.
Droid pilots and crew were usually only used by criminals. By smugglers. By the very lowest of the low.
How could Marchion Ro stoop to this?
“How do you like my new crew?” he said. At times it was as though he could read her thoughts.
Ghirra knew better than to answer. “I’ve never seen droids like these before. Where—where did you get them?”
“There are certain merchants who deal in forbidden cargo, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“Your crew—why did you—”
“No more backstabbing,” Marchion said. “No more plots and intrigues in the back corridors. No more ambitious Tempest Runners bribing and coaxing my underlings for information, leading them into sedition. From this day, the Gaze Electric is wholly, completely, unalterably under my control alone.”
Ghirra swallowed hard. “I see the wisdom of it,” she said, which on one level was true. But the revulsion she felt as she witnessed droids in total control of a ship this large and powerful—it would take time for that to subside. She wasn’t certain she wanted it to.
From the shadows in the back of the bridge came some movement, a shape unlike that of the eerie mirrored droids around them. The tension in Ghirra’s chest eased slightly—at least one other sentient was aboard—but then the shape moved into the light, and her horror returned tenfold.
The droid that hovered toward her was massive, nearly two meters high, broad at the midsection, narrowing down to the repulsor base. Its surface was as unusual as its make; whatever it was didn’t appear to be metal, but something almost crystalline, a pale ghostly blue that reminded Ghirra of the lips of the dying. Instead of the mock-face many human-sized droids had, or the reflective nothingness on the crew droids around her, this droid had two horizontal slits, both bright red, like gashes cut into flesh…or strikes of lightning scalding a stormy sky. Faint illumination shone from each slit. It was as though it could look at her, and snarl at her, even without motion and sound.
“It seems Carnine wishes to introduce himself.” Marchion motioned the KA-R9 even closer. “I need more than crewmembers, you see. I need enforcers as well. And Carnine is excellent at his work.”
Ghirra put one hand on Marchion’s shoulder, hoping it would steady her. It did not. “I don’t doubt it.”
The positional thrusters remained at only one-third power. Elzar had been sure he’d find another workaround that would add to this, but he’d now exhausted every trick he knew without having any further effect. The Nihil saboteurs had known exactly what they were doing.
I wish Estala Maru had been in the lower half of the station when it broke, Elzar thought. He’d know just how to get the thrusters going.
It was remembering Maru that did it. Elzar felt a prickle of awareness at the edges of his consciousness—sensitive and wrong, like the split second between touching something hot and feeling the pain.
Then the pain hit, and it was unspeakably terrible. Anguish almost beyond imagining—
“The top half of the station,” he gasped. “Do you feel it?”
Stellan barely seemed to know that Elzar had spoken; he showed no reaction, just lay there blank and numb.
Swiftly Elzar dashed into the docking bay—quieter, but not deserted—and toward the nearest ship he knew, which happened to be the Vessel. He jogged up the ramp, calling, “Can you get a visual on the top half of the station?”
His response came when he made his way into the cockpit to find Geode sitting there solemnly, a holo already picked up from satellites and projected into midair. Elzar sank into a seat, staring at the nightmare vision before him.
Starlight Beacon was burning.
The top half of the station arced through Eiram’s atmosphere like a meteor, leaving behind a long trail of glowing, incinerating debris. By this point the structure was shaking so violently it could be seen even from this great distance, and there was no way it could hold together much longer.
Already parts of it were ablaze. Elzar could feel those people’s pain almost as though it were his own—and those who were Jedi were even more vivid to him than the rest, stabbing into his awareness like red-hot knives.
The temple spire. The Hub. The beacon itself. They were all immolating.
Avar, please, please don’t be there, he thought. They’d already had readings suggesting the Ataraxia had made its escape, but Elzar couldn’t help worrying. It was wrong to wish for one person’s survival more than any other’s—a sign of “attachment”—but at the moment Elzar didn’t give a damn.
Somewhere in the heart of all that pain, he sensed an incredible power of will—someone exerting the kind of effort through the Force that could very nearly drain one’s own life. Elzar didn’t know who it was, but he knew that this act of heroism was saving lives every second it could be sustained.
And then it snapped.
Starlight Beacon’s upper half fell apart entirely in a burst of flame. The spire twisted violently as it turned into a plume of sparks and ash. Then Elzar spotted the glowing egglike shape that had to have been the Hub—people in there were still alive as the fire consumed them. Amid it all, Starlight’s beacon pulsed one last time, the light nearly lost in Eiram’s dazzling sky—then fell dark forever.
The pain within the station intensified, fractured, died out. Tears of pain and even rage welled in Elzar’s eyes as the last of it faded away.
No one had survived.
The Vessel was not the only ship that had been able to patch into Eiram’s satellites. A small, select group of pilots watched aboard the Ace of Staves.
That was, most of them watched. Koley Linn stared at those he had invited, gauging their reactions. He’d have picked a different crew, if there had been more choice; those not working on shutting down the rest of the station tended to be very young, rather elderly, or in some way vulnerable, like the heavily pregnant Shistavanan who watched with her hand clasped over her muzzle.
Still, they could all fly a ship, and they could all shoot. That meant they could serve Koley’s purpose.
Once the top half of the station had gone black and broken up and ceased to be interesting, he said, “The Jedi couldn’t save that half. What makes them think this half will be any different?”
Nobody seemed able to reply. People got so shaken up about things, even when they happened to other people—Koley had never understood that.
He continued, “We can’t sit here waiting for the Jedi to fix this. We can’t sacrifice our lives in a futile effort to save people who are already doomed. All of us have spaceworthy ships. All we need is an open door—or a hole big enough to fly through.” Koley grinned. “What say we open one up?”