Chancey Yarrow had forgotten that working on machinery could be fun. She’d spent so much damn time fighting and scraping and clawing for advantage, doing the best she could in a hard galaxy…and all the while, she could’ve been doing this instead: standing up to her elbows in space station mechanisms, analyzing their workings, forgetting anything and everything that lay beyond the reach of her hands. Even invention, with all the dazzling mental fireworks it provided, lacked something of the core satisfaction of simply fixing what needed repair.
I’ve been focusing on the wrong things lately, she mused as she checked the drivers powering the positional thrusters of Starlight Beacon. I should get back to basics. There’s something to be said for dealing with problems that can actually be resolved.
“No pressure,” said Nan, who stood next to her with folded arms, “but we only have a few minutes left.”
Chancey understood that this didn’t mean “a few minutes before Starlight collides with the planet’s surface and kills us all.” It meant “a few minutes before Starlight has fallen so low that the positional thrusters will no longer be able to avoid the collision.” Still not good news—but the distinction helped keep her head clear.
Besides, she had finally glimpsed the solution. Just reroute a little power here, angle the thrusters like so—and within minutes, Starlight Beacon would be aloft again.
Would the Jedi ever admit that an escaped prisoner, one who’d worked with the Nihil, no less, had been the one to save the day?
Probably not. But they’d know the truth. Chancey wondered if they’d swallow their Republic pride to thank her. Maybe someday even Sylvestri would realize what her mother had accomplished this day, and that knowledge might be the first stone in a new bridge between them, one upon which they could finally find each other again.
Hope doesn’t matter, Chancey reminded herself as she took the T-7 anx and got to work. The only reward I need is survival.
“Do you have any idea how many spaceport checklists ask about thermal detonators?” Affie demanded. “Lots of them. You know how many of those lists I lied on by saying no? Apparently all of them. How could you not tell me about this?”
Leox shrugged. The two of them stood on the Vessel’s ramp, where she’d stopped him sauntering out with a detonator like it was no big deal. He seemed to find all of this amusing, which just made Affie madder. His only reply: “The thermal detonator’s been aboard the Vessel longer than you have. That sabacc game was a loooong time ago.”
“But the Vessel is my ship! I had a right to know!”
The smirk finally faded from Leox’s face. “I reckon you did. Back when I won it, though, the Vessel belonged to your mother, and I didn’t think it would be wise to report it to her. No telling what she would’ve used it for.”
As much as Affie hated to admit it, Leox was right. Her adoptive mother, Scover Byne, had had a ruthless streak. Many of her pilots had been pressured to take on unethical, dangerous, even doomed assignments. Scover Byne wasn’t a person who could be trusted with a thermal detonator.
But still. “I’ve had the ship for a while now, Leox. You could’ve told me.”
“Look at the bright side,” he said, bringing his goggles down over his eyes. “After today, no more thermal detonator.”
“What are you going to do with that thing?”
“This is the plan.” Leox pointed toward the far corner of the docking bay. “I’m going to attach this detonator to that area of the station’s hull, which as you can see used to be an air lock during station construction but is now just a little bit thinner. I’m going to blow the detonator, which ought to punch a hole straight through. We’re in-atmosphere by this point, so decompression is no longer a catastrophic problem. Once we’ve got a hole through which I’m able to exit, I can use the manual controls exterior to the station to open the launching bay doors.”
Affie shook her head. “Let’s just get into an escape pod, Leox. I can get another ship.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the only one here who’s unwilling to let go of a ship.”
Indeed, not quite a dozen crews—some single pilots, others groups of two or three—remained, inseparable from their ships to the end. Affie knew that they were like her, people with no other work, no other home. Even the Cerean pilot whose ship had a huge hole cut in the hull had refused to leave it behind; it was the only possession she had.
She turned back to agree with Leox—it had to be tried—but he was already running toward his target, thermal detonator in hand.
Elzar crept forward, lightsaber in his hands, listening to the sounds—the voices—he heard from the thruster control room.
“Are you sure you’ve got it?”
“One more second, and then this ride is over.”
He leaned forward at an angle and saw two figures that he recognized from footage Stellan had shown him: the prisoners who had been captured in the raids on the Nihil, the ones who had protested their innocence. Yet here they were, at the heart of the station’s mechanisms, revealing themselves as the saboteurs.
They were still alive—while Regald Coll, Nib Assek, and Orla Jareni lay dead, husked into dusty remnants of themselves. Not only had the saboteurs brought aboard these mysterious creatures, not only had they detonated a device that killed many and doomed nearly all, but now they were also trying to destroy Elzar’s last chance to save lives.
Was there no end to the evil they created? Were they completely without pity, mercy, common decency?
A thousand images flashed in Elzar’s mind in an instant: the chaos created by the Hyperspace Disaster. Valo. The terrible fate of Loden Greatstorm. Stellan’s pale, haggard face. The wounded ships drifting through space, dark and dead as the beings that had been within them. The lightning bolt. Their pride, their arrogance, their greed—
He could bear it no more.
He would bear it no more.
No more.
Elzar leapt into the room, igniting his lightsaber mid-flip, until he landed directly in front of the woman who stood deep in the workings of the positional thrusters. Her large eyes widened, and already she was going for a weapon, ready and willing to kill him if that was the only way she got to kill others—
Before she could reach it, Elzar swung his lightsaber, the blade splitting her in two. Instantly she fell, dead.
Sometimes, fate threw you a freebie.
Leox felt confident he’d have gone with this plan regardless—but it was kind of great that one of the ships parked nearest his target for the thermal detonator happened to be the Ace of Staves. Not only would no living owner be deprived of their ship due to damage from the impending explosion, but as a benefit, some of the last evidence of Koley Linn’s existence was probably about to be sent into oblivion.
Holding grudges against the dead is unworthy, Leox chided himself. Life is meant to be lived in the now, where the dead can no longer be. He needed to transcend this pettiness—and he’d get right on that, as soon as he was sure they weren’t all about to die.
One small twist clicked the thermal detonator into countdown mode. Leox stuffed the detonator into a small container in front of that bit of the hull and ran like hell. As long as he put the Ace of Staves between himself and the explosion, he ought to do okay…
The blast rocked the bay, nearly sending Leox toppling down. He heard a few shrieks in the instant before that section of the hull gave way—and then the bay was filled with howling wind and the sudden brilliance of sunlight. Leox’s gut twisted at the absolute proof that this space station was in space no longer, and probably never would be again.
But he still had time to get out there and save the Vessel.
Leox activated the magnetic clamps on his gloves and ran for the hull opening. The next bit would be hard—but he could get the job done. He had to. Affie and Geode’s lives depended on it.
The best of the show from space was already over. How quickly glory could pass.
Marchion Ro stood on the bridge of the Gaze Electric, looking down at the planet Eiram—a world so insignificant, so devoid of true riches, that his Nihil had never even bothered raiding it.
Thaya Ferr stood next to him, silently making notations on her datapad. On his other side stood Ghirra Starros, head held high, her hand wrapped around his arm. Was she foolish enough to think that these gestures would blind him to the wetness in her eyes?
There was no point in undertaking such an action if the consequences of that action were not fully understood and accepted from the start. This sort of behavior—regretting what one had done, when one had fully succeeded—was the sort of thing Ro held in depthless contempt.
Ghirra had already served her most critical purpose. Ro briefly considered eliminating her on the spot; someone this weak would be more liability than ally in the days to come. He went so far as to look over toward KA-R9, hovering malevolently only steps away, and wonder how swiftly the droid could activate his laser scalpels.
But no. Ghirra remained Ro’s best asset within the Galactic Senate. No point in getting rid of her until she’d done all she possibly could for him—or, of course, until he found someone better. For now, she’d do.
In a low voice he said, “In some ways, I wished I’d had the chance to send Starlight Beacon crashing down upon someplace far grander. On a planet the high-and-mighty Republic would pay more attention to.”
“I think you’ve made your point,” Ghirra said flatly.
Thaya Ferr, more quietly, asked, “This has a rightness to it as well, does it not?”
She understood much. “It does. The final resting place of the Republic’s ultimate symbol—of the Jedi’s pride—will be a backwater nowhere that didn’t even appear on most star maps.”
“Then it is perfection, my lord.”
Ro nodded. Already Starlight was no more than an indistinct shape outlined against Eiram’s clouds. Soon the station would pass through them and be invisible.
“Switch to planetary holonews,” he commanded Ferr. “Let’s watch this along with the rest of the galaxy.”
Instantly the cloud-filled image on the main viewscreen was replaced by footage taken from Eiram’s surface, where an enlarging dark mass was taking up more and more of their sky.
Even knowing how dangerous and powerful thermal detonators were, the blast that rocked the docking bay still caught Affie off guard. It knocked her out of her chair onto the cockpit floor of the Vessel; next to her, Geode wobbled precariously but managed not to fall. Metal debris clattered and clanged along her ship’s hull—on every other ship remaining in the bay—and Affie suspected she wasn’t the only one swearing.
But then an enormous shaft of light streamed through the bay, piercing through her anger and fear. “We’re close,” she said to Geode. “We’re so close!”
Although the wind sweeping through the docking bay was fierce, only the slightest depressurization registered on her ship controls. The station had fallen well into atmosphere by this point. When the doors finally opened, they could fly out minus any problems.
Even the Cerean pilot can make it if she straps herself in, Affie thought, glancing over at the ship with a hole in its side. Sure enough, that pilot was already in her captain’s chair, prepping for takeoff—as was pretty much everyone else remaining on the deck.
All Leox had to do was get the doors open, then get back.
He has magnetic clamp gloves, she reminded herself as she began working through her pre-launch checklist. The Vessel needed more work, but she’d fly to the surface smoothly enough. He’ll be locked onto the side of this station like a Shilian lamprey. No problems there.
As if in reply, at that instant the docking bay doors finally, finally began to open.
They slid wider with what seemed like excruciating slowness—but Leox was working with manual controls, at what had to be the top possible speed. Affie could hardly imagine the effort it took; he had to be giving it his last measure of strength.
At last the doors opened wide enough for Affie to catch a glimpse of Leox: at an angle, his body just barely visible at the corner of the doors, his loose shirt and dark-blond curls whipping frantically in the wind. Even from here, she could tell how hard he was working.
“You’ve got it, you’ve got it.” Affie wasn’t even aware she was speaking out loud. “C’mon, Leox, get back in here and let’s go!”
The first ship to speed out was the Cerean pilot, swooping past them to fly free into Eiram’s sky. A couple of others followed, each one barely squeezing into the narrow opening between the bay doors, but making it through nonetheless. Affie’s face lit up as she saw Leox begin working his way toward the opening—apparently he was coming in that way, not through the hole on the side—
—and then the wind caught him, yanked him backward, away from the station. For one moment it seemed as though Leox hung in the sky, before the gales tore him away, flinging him down toward the ground, and death.
Affie screamed. “No! No no no please no please no!” The words kept babbling out of her, like if she said them enough somehow what had just happened wouldn’t have happened. But Leox was gone.
Geode managed to maintain his composure, locking in coordinates that would take them safely to the ground. Though tears welled in Affie’s eyes, blurring the console, she knew the controls by heart. She punched the right toggles until the Vessel powered up, lifted off, and shot out of the doors.
The last thing Leox Gyasi had ever done was sacrifice his life for his friends, Affie thought. She wouldn’t let his sacrifice go to waste.
Nan clung to the nearest metal strut, staring at the sight of Chancey Yarrow dead on the floor—both halves of her—and the murderous Jedi Knight who stood over the corpse. Surely Nan would be the next to fall, and she intended to give the Jedi some hell before she went.
But the Jedi just kept staring down at Chancey like an idiot. Like he hadn’t meant to do what he had unquestionably just done.
“Why?” Nan said.
“You’re Nihil,” replied the dark-haired Jedi. His voice sounded hollow. Did he even believe his own words? “You did this to Starlight.”
“Us? We’d left the Nihil months before you even captured us.”
“Then how—how could—”
“The Nihil sent a saboteur team, three completely different people—who, by the way, we took out of commission.” Nan gestured at Werrera’s body lying on the floor. “We were prisoners here, remember? We didn’t find out about this in advance any more than you did!”
This was all true, more or less. Nan hoped the Jedi wouldn’t hear all the things she’d carefully left out. He couldn’t stop staring at Chancey as he said, “You—you killed the Nihil who bombed this station? Why?”
“Because we were trying to save the station and our skins with it! Not to mention yours!”
The Jedi turned toward the controls that Chancey had been working on only moments before. “Right. The positional thrusters—it looks like she—like she’d already managed to repair the—”
A red light began flashing as a metallic, synthesized voice intoned, “Station below thruster operating level. Repeat, the station has descended below thruster operating level. Evacuate immediately.”
The Jedi’s face turned white as he realized what he’d done. Nan wondered if he’d stand there stupefied while the station crashed.
She took off running, though she couldn’t resist shouting as she went: “You killed this station’s last chance! You’ve killed us all!”