Bell Zettifar led the group into the station bay reserved for cargo only. As a general rule, cargo ships were left unattended, save by droids; pilots spent almost all of their time on the rest of the station. Some of these pilots were part of the band to seal off this section; others, who had been enjoying the hospitality offered on the top half of Starlight Beacon, had already been killed.
“This is my thought,” Bell said, ostensibly to Burryaga but really to everyone within earshot. “We open up these bay doors and let all the cargo ships escape, along with as many passengers as they can carry. That doesn’t save everyone, and it means a lot of people lose the spacecraft left behind in the main docking bay—but we still save a lot of lives.”
The pilot named Leox looked skeptical. “How come you can open up these doors but not the other ones, in the main docking bay?”
“Because, in the main docking bay, it’s more complex—we’d have to hold in the atmosphere, handle pressurization, keep the ships that can’t go into space right now in place, close the doors again in time—basically, it’s so complicated as to be impossible, even for experienced Force-users.” It made Bell’s head hurt just thinking about it. “Here, though—all of these ships remain spaceworthy. We’ve already sealed off this area from most of the rest of the station. Meaning, all we have to do here is get the doors open. It’ll be explosive depressurization. People will have to be braced for it. But then they can leave.”
Burryaga gruffled encouragingly. Leox raised an eyebrow that seemed to say, Good thinking, kid. The others huddled nearby began eagerly discussing how it might work, what different ships might be able to carry, and so on. It was Pikka Adren who asked, “But how do we decide who stays and who goes?”
If handled badly, Bell could see that this could turn into a flashpoint for conflict, but he thought he knew how it ought to be done. “Obviously, the pilots and crews of these ships get to be aboard them. Each ship will then be filled to capacity with people, that capacity to be determined by droids. Once we know how many people there are spots for, we distribute slots at random.”
An Ardennian near the back, one of the cargo pilots, appeared wary, folding all four of her arms across her chest. “Does that mean we have to dump cargo?”
“Almost certainly,” Bell said. “This is an extreme emergency. Surely you—and your employers—will see that.” The Ardennian nodded, already resigned to the loss.
Pikka spoke up again, asking a question Bell hadn’t anticipated: “What if we don’t want to abandon our ships? For some of us, our ships are our lives.” Several people murmured in agreement.
This seemed suicidal to Bell, but these people knew the facts, and could make their own decisions. “Nobody would be forced to go.”
Burryaga growled inquisitively; he’d taken up a datapad and was reviewing a cargo manifest of everything in the bay. Two ships were carrying living creatures—would they have to be spaced like other cargo? Or should they be saved?
“What living creatures?” Bell first thought of charhounds like Ember; the idea of spacing even one of them made his heart ache.
But then Burryaga explained that, improbably, both ships were carrying rathtars.
“Rathtars?” Bell wouldn’t have expected anybody to be fool enough to haul those things around, much less two different pilots within the same week. To judge by the laughter and disbelieving stares of the group at large, he wasn’t the only one.
Pikka shook her head. “Yeah, we can just space those.”
Burryaga, however, had become unexpectedly grave. He said that the last time he’d seen Orla Jareni, she had mentioned the rathtars. She found the label suspicious, probably false—designed to keep anybody from looking inside those cargo holds to see what was really inside.
They had to hurry—Bell felt that urgency in his every cell—but what if this had been the Nihil tactic used to sabotage the station? What if another act of sabotage still lay ahead?
“Okay,” he said. “We check those cargo holds. Then we finish prep. Within half an hour we need to blow this thing.”
“What did they do to these things?” Nan struck the entry ring for the latest set of escape pods so hard the metal bit into her hand. The pain hardly mattered. “I’ve gone through every type of slice I’ve ever heard of, and invented a few new ones. And the pods still won’t launch!”
“That Nihil group knew what they were doing,” pointed out Chancey Yarrow, “and since we joined forces with them and helped manufacture this particular crisis, we’ve only got ourselves to blame.”
Nan felt like there was more than enough blame to go around, but discussing this with Chancey only made her angrier, so she dropped it.
They’d traveled down far enough to put themselves in radiation danger; this was the lowest deck, their last attempt. But none of the escape pods were wired any differently. This would have mattered less if Nan and Chancey had been able to find any power cells to manually activate a pod or two. No such luck.
“We’re going to have to go back to the docking bay level,” Chancey said.
“We go up there, we get caught.” Nan could just imagine what glee Addie had taken in reporting them to the Jedi. She’d been expecting a capture team to pounce on them at any second.
Chancey shook her head. “I’m not so sure. Yeah, any other time, they’d be scouring the station high and low for any sign of us. But they’ve got bigger problems right now.”
This made some sense, Nan supposed. Still, going up to the docking bay level and assuming nobody knew to look out for them…they were pushing their luck.
Then again, if they were captured, and the Jedi found some way to escape Starlight Beacon, the Republic would probably save its prisoners, too. They were just idiotic enough for that.
Nan preferred to leave on her own terms, but Chancey was right. “Okay. Let’s give it a try.”
The first rathtar transport—so-called—that Leox and the rest came upon sat there with its cargo hold door wide open, and the hold itself completely empty.
“A break-in,” guessed Bell Zettifar.
Leox shook his head; he’d led the kind of life that taught you what robberies looked like or didn’t. “The doors haven’t been forced. Whatever was in this hold, it’s been taken out—or let out—by the people who brought the ship here in the first place.”
“Explosives.” Pikka Adren, at least, was catching on. “Is this how the Nihil got them on board?”
“My guess is security systems would’ve picked up any large devices on scans,” Leox said. “Besides, you don’t need anything big to do damage. Pick the right material, and you could rip the guts out of this station with a device no bigger than your palm.”
“Well, they didn’t release a bunch of rathtars onto the station,” Bell said. “Explosion or no, we would’ve noticed that.”
Burryaga had walked into the cargo hold to nose around for himself. Literally: He growled that he’d encountered rathtars before, and while he smelled some kind of animal that had been in the hold, it had to be a different species, one Burryaga had never come across before.
“Animals?” Leox couldn’t wrap his head around this one. “Why would anybody haul a bunch of animals up here as part of a terrorist attack? Especially since the animals haven’t caused anybody a lick of trouble the whole time.”
Then Burryaga suggested that the animals might have been not the attacking element but a ruse, included so that their strong scent would throw off detection of the real threat. While Leox didn’t think most Jedi were as odor-sensitive as Wookiees, it was a theory worth considering.
Bell pointed to another cargo ship docked less than fifty meters away. “That’s the other ship that said it was hauling rathtars, and it looks like it’s still holding its cargo.”
Burryaga and Bell headed toward that ship, and several people—Leox and Pikka included—went along with them. Whatever this was, Leox wanted to see it. He had half an idea that they’d be innocent creatures, more lives to save.
But maybe the Jedi already knew. He asked, “What’s the Force telling you about this?”
“Not much,” Bell admitted. “Something’s been clouding the Force on Starlight for days. Otherwise, the Nihil could never have taken out this station.”
That was quite the revelation. Leox welcomed the frankness—seemed to him like the time for tact had run out about point four seconds after that Nihil bomb went off. Granted, it also made him a bit uneasy, because he’d rather have had the Jedi at their best during a disaster. But you always had to play whatever sabacc hand you were dealt.
“Okay,” Bell said. “Get ready. We’re opening this on the count of three. One—”
Leox looked back at the open, empty cargo hold they’d just left behind. Wild animals had been let loose and were running free around Starlight—the Force was blocked—was there a chance those two things were related?
“—Two—”
It seemed unlikely. Still, Leox was about to ask when Bell said, “—Three.”
On that mark, Burryaga sprang the doors on the new ship and let them slide open. For one split second, nobody—and nothing—moved.
Then Bell said, “Okay, so these are rathtars.”
Which was when the rathtars woke up, and all hell broke loose.
Elzar caught a sense of alarm—new alarm, sharper than the rest—but lost it almost instantly. He breathed out in frustration. Now that he had stopped shielding himself and once again sought the full guidance of the Force, he understood more how compromised his comrades had been. The dampening, and damaging, of the Force on this station…it was like having to work with one arm strapped to his side. While this was happening, he couldn’t be his whole, best self, and that was what he needed to be to save Starlight Beacon.
As it was, he was fighting with all he had left—and it still looked like it wouldn’t be enough.
So he was talking it out, mostly to himself, but also with JJ-5145.
“There’s no way to safely get through the irradiated levels to the positional thruster mechanisms.” Elzar kept staring at the holo cross section of Starlight, which he’d maneuvered not to show the top half anymore. Being reminded of that pain could only distract him. “Where are the radiation suits?”
JJ-5145 obligingly reported: “Radiation suits were stored in two main areas aboard Starlight Beacon, on both one of the most topmost levels and one of the bottommost.”
“We’ve lost the upper level suits, obviously, but—”
“The lower storage area for the radiation suits is currently inaccessible due to radiation,” the droid reported with no sense of irony whatsoever. Elzar managed not to groan out loud. “Some species are more resistant to radiation. Are any of those on board, Forfive?”
“One of the maintenance supervisors, Ar Prace, is a Fian,” said JJ-5145, which gave Elzar hope for the brief moment before the droid continued, “but it appears she was on the top half of the station when Starlight split in two.”
One more person gone Elzar hadn’t yet reckoned with. “How long will it take for the radiation to die down?”
“Approximately ten thousand years.”
“That’s slightly more time than we have to spare.” Elzar ran his hands along the side of his face, the scratch of stubble against his palms. “Ships can fly through that level of radiation, if they’re shielded, but we can’t get any ships out of the docking bay…”
No, that’s a lunatic idea.
It’s also the only one I’ve got.
“Maybe,” Elzar said. “If we can’t fly the ships out of the station, maybe we can fly through it.”
Bell’s lightsaber was in his hand within a microsecond, ignited and ready—
—but the rathtars were ready, too.
They rolled out with terrifying speed, tentacles whipping in every direction, hundreds of creepy soulless eyes and one enormous mouth. Everyone scattered, except for the Jedi, who somehow had to deal with this.
Bell swung up savagely toward one of the rathtars, ready to bisect it cleanly, only to find his stroke blocked by Burryaga’s lightsaber. “What are you doing?” Bell yelped, diving out of the enraged rathtar’s immediate path, though another of its brethren was rolling right after it. “I had him, Burry!”
With a long and mighty roar, Burryaga explained that rathtars reproduce by fission, and he didn’t know if cutting one in half made two rathtars or not, but this was no time to find out.
“Don’t cut them in half,” Bell said, leaping through the air to the top of one of the other docked ships. “Good strategy. Thanks for passing that along.”
He needed to defend the civilians if he could, but they were already instinctively employing the best strategy, which was scattering widely throughout the bay. The six freed rathtars couldn’t chase everyone at once.
As it turned out, they could climb the sides of ships, as Bell discovered when one of them rolled atop the one he’d taken shelter upon. Tentacles flailing, it lurched toward Bell.
Don’t slice, he told himself. Stab.
He had to slash through the tentacles, spinning his lightsaber right to left at tremendous speed; blood spattered everywhere, but the rathtar didn’t slow down. Its horrid, many-toothed mouth opened wide to devour Bell whole.
Bell stabbed his lightsaber straight into the maw of the creature, his lunge taking the blade through almost its entire body. The rathtar howled one last cry before rolling, dead, to land heavily on the floor.
Where next? Burryaga had just dispatched another of the creatures, though he’d managed to stab it through the back. But that still left four rathtars loose, which were chasing after fleeing civilians.
Bell ran to the edge of the ship and leapt wide, about ten meters, to land between Pikka Adren and the nearest rathtar. He tried fighting it the same way as he had the last, but this one seemed determined to slaughter people with its tentacles and only then bring them to its mouth. Bell slashed through tentacles—slashed again—but there were always more, how many tentacles do these things have—
Blasterfire from behind Bell rang out, each bolt striking the rathtar dead center. It yowled and writhed for only a moment, then seemed to deflate. Bell looked behind him to Pikka standing with her blaster in hand. She gave him a grin, which he returned.
Nearby, however, Burryaga and another rathtar were locked in a messy fight—one angled so that Pikka couldn’t fire without possibly hitting Burry. The other two rathtars were almost at the far edges of the bay at this point. Bell ran toward Burryaga and his opponent, thinking, Usually teaming up helps, because most beings can’t fight in two directions at once, but rathtars can fight in every direction at once.
This one was considerably bigger than the others, too—so large that Bell wasn’t sure even a strong lightsaber stab could penetrate to its heart.
If they couldn’t defeat the thing, they’d have to escape it.
“Emergency flare!” Bell shouted as he leapt into the fray beside Burryaga. “Somebody find one and ignite it now!”
With that, Bell was back in battle mode, slashing and hacking his way through what seemed to be a forest of tentacles. Burryaga howled in fury as the rathtar kept coming, undaunted, always with more tentacles to spare.
“Heyyyyo!” Leox’s voice rang out through the cargo hold. “Bet you’d like one of these!”
With that, he ignited an emergency flare. An almost blindingly white glow filled the hold like a miniature sun.
The nearly brainless rathtars only knew that something was very bright and so needed to be chased. With its eerie cry, the big one rolled away from Bell and Burryaga toward Leox and the flare; the other two followed. Once both Jedi were clear, Leox threw the flare with all his might. As it soared to the opposite end of the bay, every other being in the cargo bay ran like hell for the doors.
They made it out. But the flare didn’t distract them for long. As they ran, Bell could hear the wet flolloping sound of tentacles slapping metal.
“Through the next air lock!” Bell shouted. “Burry, it’s up to you!”
The next air lock was only a few meters ahead. The entire group made it through, with Burryaga bringing up the rear. As he reached it, Burryaga jumped up to grab the mechanism at the top of the air lock, then held himself there with one arm while hastily finishing the maneuver.
Bell looked back to see the rathtars rolling toward them, faster than ever, way too close—
—when Burryaga swung through the air lock, which then slammed shut with the rathtars on the other side.
Everyone exhaled at once; a few individuals swore. Bell leaned against the air lock doors, panting. “Well, that was fun.”
This only won him dirty looks from the rest of the group—with one exception. “Wouldn’t go that far,” Leox said with a grin, “but what that incident lacked in serenity of mind will be more than made up for through the years in anecdotal value.”
Weirdly, he was right.
Assuming they survived.