Starlight only has manual opening controls on the exterior of the station, Elzar Mann noted as he studied the schematics on display in Stellan’s office. The situation’s too unstable to send anyone out in a vac suit yet. Maybe we can hook up independent power cells to the doors?
Despite the best efforts of JJ-5145, the sheer number of astromechs currently networked together in the office crowded the space, and they’d been bleeping and screeching in various states of warning from the moment they’d been tied together. So it took Elzar a few moments to realize that the pitch of their alarm had risen. He looked up from the schematics to check their readouts.
Radiation levels were rising. The remaining links between the top and bottom halves of the station—already damaged and frayed, all but useless—were beginning to sever completely. Worst of all, the internal stability levels of the innermost structure of Starlight were plummeting.
Elzar had known from very shortly after the explosion that there was a risk this station could break in two. But Starlight Beacon had been created as the ultimate symbol of the Republic, designed by its greatest scientists, built by the fabled craftworkers of Riosa. He’d been so sure that it would withstand this damage, at least long enough for help to arrive. Never had he seriously contemplated it falling apart—
—until this moment.
The floor jolted out from under Bell Zettifar—or so it seemed to him as he stumbled sideways, catching himself against the wall. “What was that?” he asked, looking over at Burryaga.
His Wookiee friend had joined him near the entrance to the docking bay, where they were theoretically ensuring that nobody else pulled a blaster and created further problems. Burryaga, who’d had to grab a service ladder to remain upright, looked no more confident than Bell felt himself. With a whine, Burryaga admitted that he had no idea what had caused that jolt, but it couldn’t be good.
“None of this is good,” Bell said, “but I didn’t think it could get worse.”
Burryaga replied that as long as you were alive to worry about it, the situation could always get worse. It was a good point, but not one Bell particularly wanted to dwell on at the moment.
He went to the nearest control panel, which had been more or less functional only a few minutes before. No readouts, no power. The emergency lights flickered.
Worst of all, however, was a deep shuddering vibration that passed through the station, rumbling beneath their feet.
Bell looked over at Burryaga. “We should probably report this to Master Stellan, right?”
Burryaga thought that Stellan probably already knew about the increasing instability in the station—but the situation was changing fast. It would be wise to get as much information as possible, while they still could.
Would it? Bell wasn’t as sure. This struck him as the kind of situation where more information might prove paralyzing rather than helpful.
But if the worst-case scenario was coming to pass—Starlight fully falling apart, exposing them all to the quick bleak death of being spaced—Bell would want to be by Master Indeera’s side when it happened. He would want to have Ember in his arms. That was worth facing whatever terrors the truth might hold.
He rested one hand against the wall, taking a breath as he steadied his emotion—then yanked his hand back. “Ow. That’s warm. Too warm.”
Burryaga reached toward the same section of wall, stopping just millimeters before coming into direct contact. He whined that something was overheating.
Mentally Bell reviewed the schematics of Starlight Beacon as best he knew them. While he was no engineer, he’d studied the details enough to feel reasonably sure of his conclusion. “Burry, I think the station’s auxiliary power system—something’s seriously wrong.”
Stellan felt something like himself again, and not one moment too soon. Elzar, Bell, Burryaga, Nib, and JJ-5145 all ringed his desk, surrounded by astromechs, awaiting his orders—and, at last, Stellan was sure of the orders to give.
“Our first priority has to be stabilizing auxiliary power,” he told them. “Without that, we don’t have life support. We don’t even have light. If we lose those things, any other repair or rescue efforts will become impossible. Our analyses suggest we can still shore it up to run another two to four hours.”
“But the structural instability!” Elzar didn’t seem to understand that there was nothing else to be done. “You’re talking about hours from now, but Stellan—I’m not positive the station’s going to last even that long.”
“What should we do, then?” Stellan demanded. “Do you have a crew of engineers from a radiation-resistant species, ready to go in with thousands of tons of durasteel and build a new skeleton for this station?”
“—of course not, and yet—”
“We can only put our energies toward our absolute top priority.” Stellan looked intently into Elzar’s eyes, willing him to understand. “Nothing can be higher priority than keeping air in our lungs and light to work by.” A handful of Republic techs and Jedi aboard were of species that did not rely on sight as their primary sense, but they were neither numerous nor specialized enough to perform the level of work necessary on their own—and even they needed to breathe. “There are dangers at work that we are powerless to prevent. If we allow them to distract us from the few tools we have to increase our chances of survival, then we waste those chances. Besides—honestly, if the station’s breaking in two, I don’t know that there’s much we can do about it.”
Finally the truth seemed to have sunk in. Elzar’s face had paled. “You should know—the astromechs think we’ll hit the breaking point within the half hour. Maybe within the next fifteen minutes.”
“I imagine we’ll recognize it when it comes,” Stellan said drily.
“But the people up there—” Nib protested. “—and the Ataraxia’s docked on the top half of the station, so what happens to them?”
“That weight lies heavily on us all,” Stellan said. “But we can do literally nothing for them. We have to trust that Maru and Avar and all the others are doing their best for everyone there. They’re in good hands. So for now, we keep working. If we lose half of this station, we keep working. Unless and until the instant the walls come apart and we lose air, we keep working. Think about reinforcing the auxiliary life support. Don’t think about anything else.”
“Understood,” Nib said, squaring her tiny shoulders.
Where’s Orla? Stellan thought. She should have been back before now. Probably she’d run into one of the countless mini crises on board and was trying to handle it on her own, the way she generally did.
His line of thought was interrupted when Bell asked, “Our assignments?”
Making decisions had gotten a great deal easier for Stellan at exactly the right moment. “Nib, I’d like you to break down the auxiliary systems into smaller arrays—they’re compartmentalized, so you should be able to do it. Then we can localize the problems and fix them. After that, see if you can locate Orla Jareni; we need her on this, too. Elzar, you need to retrieve as many individual power cells as you can to help fuel some of the smaller arrays; we can expect more localized power failures as the station grows more unstable. Burryaga, Bell, you’ll lead the main repair team.”
Elzar nodded, as did Burryaga. Bell looked concerned—the young man’s lack of confidence since the death of one Master and injuring of another was holding him back, but that, too, was a matter to be dealt with another day. It was Nib who said, wearily, “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
Stellan sighed. In this moment—focused on the problem at hand, thinking only of others—he felt something like himself again, for the first time in days. “This is what hope is. It isn’t pretending that nothing will go wrong if only we try hard enough. It’s looking squarely at all the obstacles in the way—knowing the limits of our own power, and the possibility of failure—and moving ahead anyway. That is how we must proceed. With hope.”
Others were absorbing this information with sentiments very far removed from hope.
“This place is royally kriffed,” Chancey Yarrow said, crawling through a maintenance shaft on her belly, “and we are getting kriffed right along with it.”
“Kriffing up Starlight is what Marchion Ro sent the team to do,” Nan pointed out. She was a meter or so ahead of Chancey, periodically pausing to shine a glow rod and see if they were still headed in the right direction.
Chancey made a huffing sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “They did a great job.”
“Never thought I’d wish for anyone of the Nihil to make some mistakes,” Nan answered, “but here we are.”
On one level, she was almost ashamed of that feeling. This was a great triumph for the Nihil—perhaps their greatest ever—and proof beyond any doubt of Marchion Ro’s brilliance and power.
Yet the Nihil encouraged ruthlessness in the pursuit of one’s goals, and what goal could be more vital than staying alive? Nan wasn’t betraying her former self—the part of her that still, within, remained Nihil—by looking out for her own skin.
By this point she and Chancey had reached one of the lower levels, closer to the main docking bay. The goal was to get to the outer rim of the station before descending further, mostly because this level was almost certainly the most crowded, and therefore the one where they were most likely to get caught.
But the next jolt was so strong that it seemed to jar Nan’s very bones. She accidentally bit down on her tongue hard enough to taste blood. An eerie rattle began to echo the length of the maintenance shaft.
Chancey said, “I don’t think these tubes have the same atmospheric controls as the station at large. And I suspect air quality is about to become a lot bigger issue than it already is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Notice how it’s gotten a lot warmer as we crawl farther along? Something’s overheating, and my guess is it’s auxiliary life support. If that fails—it’s lights out, first literally, then figuratively. That’s our second-biggest problem.”
Nan didn’t like asking this: “Then what’s our actual biggest problem?”
“Pretty sure the station’s top and bottom halves are about to kiss each other goodbye. So how about we find some escape pods already?”
She thinks Starlight’s going to fall apart, Nan thought. Ro has literally torn the station in two. For a second, despite the danger she herself was in, Nan felt a flash of pure pride in the might of the Nihil. They’d taken the symbol of the Republic and the Jedi and snapped it in half as easily as a twig.
Self-preservation kicked in again swiftly. “So first we need to get out of these shafts, even if we’re still on a crowded level.”
“As soon as possible,” Chancey confirmed. “Who knows? The Jedi may not even notice us. They’re about to have bigger problems to deal with.”
Elzar saw the wisdom in Stellan’s advice. Life support absolutely had to be their first priority. But as he hurried through the docking bay and saw the stranded people—most of them working together, finally, in small clusters around the most damaged ships—he couldn’t help thinking about the danger they were in.
No, he wasn’t about to stand up and shout, The station is falling apart! That would only incite riotous panic. To do so when he had no solution to offer would be unspeakably cruel.
But his impatience nagged at him, sparking against his temper, which was the last thing Elzar or anybody around him needed.
Still, there was one thing he could do that might help. Elzar dashed to the docking bay’s speaker, which was still functional for projecting sound throughout the bay. He hit the controls to address them all: “This is Jedi Knight Elzar Mann. All persons are to return immediately to their vessels if those vessels are currently spaceworthy. If your neighbor’s vessel is not spaceworthy, please allow aboard as many individuals as you can safely carry. All vessels are required to take on station personnel, whether Republic, Jedi, or civilian, in the quantity that they can safely transport. Repeat, do this immediately. Mann out.”
Instantly people began to scatter for their ships, summoning their crewmates, gesturing for station workers to join them. Elzar felt one brief moment’s relief. At least if the station disintegrated entirely, those within airtight spacecraft had some slim chance of survival.
Otherwise they had none.
This announcement came as Bell and Burryaga led a repair team toward an auxiliary system juncture, and it stopped them all in their tracks.
They exchanged glances, understanding the implications immediately. “The split’s really happening,” Bell said. “Are we going to be able to get the life support stabilized in time?”
Burryaga said he wasn’t sure, but they had a chance: The auxiliary system could break down into component units, so the work they did here could sustain the lower part of the station, even if the upper part were to break away.
“Right. Let’s get on it.” Bell sounded more confident than he felt as he led Burryaga and the group of Republic techs onward.
A deep metallic groan sounded throughout the depths of the station, like the moan of an enormous dying animal. Bell’s hair stood on end; so did Burryaga’s, which was a fearsome sight to behold.
Burryaga shook his head no. After hearing that sound, Bell knew he was right. The moment of truth was coming, within mere minutes. As desperate as the life support situation might be, it would have to wait to see if any of them lived through the impending split.
He closed his eyes tightly and imagined Ember sitting next to Master Indeera. At least they were together. At least he hadn’t left either of them alone.
“Should we grab breath masks?” Bell said. “Since the passengers are going to be aboard their own ships?”
Burryaga couldn’t think of anything else useful to do, so they might as well, and he began leading the repair team toward the nearest storage crate that might have masks inside.
It was almost futile—a loss of atmospheric pressure would almost certainly lead to their being sucked out into the frigid vacuum of space. But staying alive meant returning to save his Master, and his charhound, so Bell was going to do it or die trying.
Leox hit the switches to pull up the Vessel’s ramp. Geode had already returned to his navigator’s station, and Affie clambered back into her seat. “Harness up,” Leox said. “We may be about to take a bumpy ride.”
“It’s not falling apart, is it?” Affie said, even though she was more than smart enough to put this together for herself. She knew. She just didn’t want to believe it. “Starlight wouldn’t just…disintegrate?”
Geode’s silence spoke volumes. Affie slumped back in her seat, crushed by the realization.
“Look at the bright side,” Leox said as he tightened his own harness. “We wanted those docking bay doors open, right?”
“That’s not funny.” Affie glared at him before turning to her own harness.
“Not meant to be. We might survive the debris cluster and reach open space. If not, well—at least we don’t die alone.”
Affie’s face gentled. She swiveled her seat around so that she could touch Geode with one hand, Leox’s arm with the other. Leox gave her the best smile he could. Thinking of Affie and Geode dying was harder than facing his own likely demise. That was love for you.
But he’d rather die with them than survive alone, so let fate bring what it may.
A storage area a few levels below the cargo bay—just beneath engineering—held a trove of independent power cells. Reaching them meant getting even closer to a heavily irradiated zone, which also happened to be the area where the station was most in danger of breaking apart. In other words, not the place most people would want to be at that particular time.
But if Starlight survived the impending breakup, the power cells could keep life support running, and therefore would make the difference between life and death. That made it Elzar Mann’s job to collect as many as he possibly could.
Wearing a breath mask, he clambered up the ladder and exited on the correct level. Starlight Beacon had felt shaky down near the docking bay, but that had been nothing compared with this. Even the emergency lights were down to half power, if not less, so everything was rendered in shadow and gray. The floor, the walls, the stranded bits of debris that had been knocked loose—everything trembled, so strongly that Elzar had difficulty keeping his balance. For the first time in this crisis, he called upon the Force to help him; it answered, but only as a shadow of itself. A shiver traveled along his spine. Whatever was disturbing the Jedi’s connections to the Force was stronger here…
He shut down. No more Force, no more Jedi powers. They could only harm him now, and the station had no time. He didn’t require the Force to get his work done and get the hell out.
Steadying himself against one wall, Elzar made his way toward the storage area. The identi-lock, thank goodness, remained operational; when he pressed his hand against it, the door slid open instantly. Even better, a repulsor pallet had wisely been kept in one corner. Elzar powered it up and began loading power cells, as many as it would safely hold and a few more besides. Having something constructive to do gave him a greater sense of calm than he’d been able to muster since the initial blast. If they could just ride this part out, maybe they’d be okay.
Done. Moving as fast as he could, which wasn’t that fast given the difficulty in keeping his balance, Elzar hauled the power cells to the murky maintenance shaft. Adjusting the repulsor pallet for horizontal took a second, but then he was able to lower it into the tube; it would power itself the rest of the way. Elzar climbed in after it, hustling down the ladder as fast as he could—
—and the ladder twisted, buckling directly beneath Elzar so that his feet slipped free. He clung tight with his hands until he could find his footing again. By this point the moaning of the tormented metal within the station core had become constant, higher-pitched, almost a howl. The vibrations grew stronger and stronger, until Elzar wasn’t certain he’d even be able to hold on to the ladder any longer.
He let go. For one instant, he was in free fall—but then the antigravity of the repulsor pallet caught him, more or less, allowing him to settle upon it. Breathless, Elzar stared upward. The shaking was intensifying here, but even more the farther up it went.
Despite the disturbance, the Force remained with him enough that he knew the second he had to act. Elzar pushed the repulsor pallet down faster until they reached one of the rare control panels within the maintenance shaft. His palms were sweaty as he fiddled with the controls in the near dark, thinking, go go go go go—
A containment field shimmered into existence half a meter above him. Three seconds later, the station gave way.
The shrieking of metal pierced Elzar’s eardrums. He covered the sides of his head with his hands as he stared upward in horror, watching the metal twist, tear, and disintegrate. Showers of sparks from ripped wiring lit up the maintenance shaft like flashes of lightning. Elzar could only watch as the hole grew wider and wider, then exploded outward, revealing the black starfield of space beyond.
By the Force, Elzar thought. He could see the shape of the upper half of the station, still fizzling with thousands upon thousands of sparking wires, shrinking in size as the two halves went separate ways, each toward its own fate. Damn the Nihil. Damn them to every hell in every mythology of the galaxy!
At least both individual halves’ structures seemed to have held. The emergency lights remained on. There was still some chance for survival, embodied in the power cells Elzar needed to transport immediately.
Still, before he did so, Elzar took one last moment to look at the small vanishing image of the top half of the station, as it had been and never would be again. Starlight Beacon was no more.