Color died first.
One moment Stellan could see, despite the dim emergency lighting, any number of colors: the red flare of warning lights on every electronic interface, the white-and-gold of his robes, the blue blade and quillons of his lightsaber. Then, as the chill took him, every shade and hue drained from existence, leaving him in a reality that seemed to be made of nothing but shadows.
It’s coming, he thought, though he could not have said what, nor how he knew.
Fear came next, pure biological fear, the reflexes of the animal self that least obeyed Jedi teaching. His heart rate sped; his blood pressure intensified until his temples throbbed; sweat went clammy on his skin. If Stellan had actually been afraid of something specific—anything—he could have talked himself down from it.
But this was a different category of fear, settling around him like a cold wet cloak, heavy and sodden. It was tangible, even palpable. He could no more have exorcised it from his thoughts than he could have wished a sun from its sky.
It’s coming, Stellan thought again. His vision had blurred; the corridor in which he stood went wavy and liquid, then darker, then lighter again. He thought he could see something moving toward him, but he wasn’t certain. There was no being certain of anything any longer.
Could he get away? Stellan tried to run but couldn’t. He could barely even walk. The floor pitched and swayed beneath his feet as though he were on the deck of a sailing ship during a storm. Nausea gripped him, and he had to gasp for breath. Almost flailing, he reached out for the wall to brace himself.
His hand made contact with a box. The box was called…something…something Stellan ought to remember…
It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming
Stellan hit the switch on the box. Immediately, a full air lock blast shield slammed down, cutting off the corridor less than a meter from where he stood. The thickness of the metal seemed to provide some small comfort—enough for him to stagger away—but he knew this was not an escape.
It was only a delay.
Whatever was behind that wall would come for him again, and soon.
“Thanks for running off,” Nan snapped as she and Chancey made their way down another level. The search for escape pods obviously had to be relocated, because the level they’d just left would be crawling with Jedi within seconds, assuming it wasn’t already. “Nice to know you’ve got my back.”
“Spare me,” Chancey said, almost congenially. “You seem more interested in defending the Nihil than helping me, so who’s the traitor here? If the fake outrage makes you feel better, have fun with that, but I’ve got bigger tip-yip to fry.”
Nan would’ve liked to argue this point, but Chancey was right. They had become partners, but never allies. Chancey was her companion as a matter of expedience, no more. This, too, made the Nihil seem brighter in contrast—there, people shared a creed. They shared a leader. They made sacrifices together. It could be cutthroat, yes, but there was always something greater to consider, bigger plans at work.
They emerged onto the new level to find it deserted. Anyone this close to the docking bay, she reasoned, would have gone there already if they could. But they were still close enough to the bay that finding escape pods seemed likely.
She said as much to Chancey, who didn’t seem impressed. “Fact is,” she said, “any Nihil sabotage that affected the power cells we’ve found so far probably affects them all. I say we don’t worry about the pods until we’ve found some individual power cells. Maybe one of those would juice up a pod enough to manually break free of Starlight.”
“Makes sense.” Nan still felt unsettled, even angry. Chancey was right that she wasn’t the cause of her disquiet. It would be easy to say that she was scared—that the devastation she saw around her, with loose wiring hanging from walls and ceiling, with detritus scattered on the floor, with everything gone yellowish in dim emergency lighting, had her frightened for her life—but Nan refused to admit that. The Nihil had taught her bravery before almost anything else.
It’s that girl Addie, she finally decided. She gets to fly around the galaxy having fun and acting self-righteous, and she never stops to think about how hard the rest of us are working. She never dreams about having to suffer, or sacrifice. She doesn’t know how good she has it.
If Nan ever got the chance, she decided, she’d teach Addie Hollow a lesson or two.
On Eiram’s surface, it had until recently been possible to be completely unaware that Starlight Beacon was even above the planet, much less having trouble. If you ignored news broadcasts and weren’t monitoring the skies for any particular reason, Starlight had appeared as no more than one bright spot among thousands in the firmament.
However, by this point, the only thing you had to do to realize there was trouble was to live on the southeastern continent and to look up.
It was late at night there, but those few who were awake had begun to rouse others. They pointed up at a sky thick with stars—two of which were growing larger and brighter by the moment. One of them had begun to glow a terrible shade of red.
It’s burning, said some.
It can’t, said others. It’s the symbol of the Republic. It’s the best technology the whole galaxy has to offer. It can’t have been taken down so easily.
But they said it less often as the sky brightened with the approaching dawn, and they could better see the blaze that was beginning to streak across the sky.
Queen Thandeka’s announcement came just as the sun first crested the horizon: “—advise all residents of the coastal cities to move inland as soon as possible. Do not panic. This move is a precaution only.”
The people of Eiram were a steady lot. They did not panic. They did, however, get moving in a hurry. Before full light, speeders and slides of every variety had begun clogging the streets, packed with both individuals and possessions. One tiny two-person landspeeder wobbled along carrying four humans, a Bith, and three tooka-cats—only to be caught, along with all the other traffic, on the congested roads that led to safety but had begun moving nowhere.
The mood in the docking bay had not yet become panicked again, but the calm that had been established early was only temporary, and its time was running out.
So it seemed to Leox Gyasi, who was finishing soldering some damaged clamps within a Cerean pilot’s air lock. He lifted up his goggles, ready to announce the job was done, but first took a moment to fully assess the situation surrounding him.
Those whose ships were repaired, or nearly so, were by and large acting productively: double-checking systems, assisting neighbors, prepping for the moment when they’d get a chance to take off. However, those whose ships were more severely damaged had gone ominously quiet. Some of them weren’t even moving. They stared at the more fortunate around them with large eyes, sometimes filled with fear, but other times—more dangerously—with envy, or even anger.
Worst of all, near the back, a small huddled group of Sullustans was deep in conversation with none other than that ultimate waste of carbon, Koley Linn. Leox was much too far away to hear anything specifically being said, but he could tell from the body language of the Sullustans that they were getting more fearful and angry by the second. He could also tell from the smirk on Koley’s face that he enjoyed winding them up.
Some individuals feed on conflict the way plants feed on light, Leox reminded himself. It’s as natural to them as photosynthesis to a leaf.
However, Drengir aside, plants didn’t often make a situation worse. Koley Linn almost always did. And this current situation was one that needed to improve, not devolve.
If the time came when Koley Linn needed to be shut up—Leox would take that duty on with a smile.
The low, deep groaning of metal within Starlight reminded Bell of the depths of an oceangoing ship, and of a long-ago mission with Loden Greatstorm. It felt good to remember his Master as he’d truly been—his face damp with sea spray, his lekku unfurled in the strong winds—not as the desiccated husk he had become.
Not the way Bell had just left Orla Jareni.
Burryaga howled for his Master, an eerie sound that echoed up and down the long corridor they traveled. No response from Nib Assek or from anyone else.
“Maybe she just can’t hear us,” Bell said.
This suggestion got all the response it deserved, which was none. Burryaga remained intent on the search.
In this section of the station, the vibrations from the explosion or separation must have been especially violent. Entire beams had fallen, as had enormous metal panels from walls and ceilings. Burryaga could scale the obstacles easily enough, but Bell had to work to keep up. He very nearly stumbled over one beam, and on the next plank of paneling he skidded backward and caught himself just before falling.
As he straightened, he caught a glimpse of something lying beneath the paneling—something pale, sort of dusty—
Bell went very still. Burryaga didn’t notice at first, but after several more steps turned around and whined questioningly.
“I’m not sure what it is,” Bell said, which was true no matter how strong his suspicions were. “But—I think we need to clear this area and see.”
It can’t be. It can’t have happened again. Burryaga won’t be able to bear it—
His tone of voice must have told Burryaga much, because the Wookiee had returned to his side in a mere instant. Burryaga lifted the panel and tossed it aside.
This revealed the next husk.
Nib Assek’s outline was clearer than any of the others Bell had yet seen. She might have been carved of stone, so fine were the details of her face, her robe, even her long hair fallen free from its usual bun. But even the faint stirring of air within the corridor whisked away particles from her surface, and when Burryaga reached out—at the first touch, she disintegrated into dust and nothingness, gone forever.
Elzar Mann was never, ever buying a droid as a practical joke ever again.
“Perhaps you should try rerouting the polarity reflectors,” JJ-5145 suggested as Elzar continued his work in the quartermaster’s office, trying hard to get the positional thrusters back online. “This is often effective.”
“You realize I tried that already,” Elzar said. “Right?”
“Yes, but as you have attempted multiple methods without success, there are few further possibilities to suggest. Therefore you may wish to begin repeating methods you have tried before.”
Elzar glanced up at the endlessly chipper droid. “Why would they work now when they didn’t before?”
“They would not. But you would be less frustrated if you had more tasks to perform. It is well known that most sentients function less efficiently when frustrated.”
“Let me get this straight, Forfive. You’re suggesting that doing things I know won’t work will refresh my mind so that I’m able to think of something that will work?”
The droid swiveled happily on his spherical base. “That is correct, Master Elzar.”
This was absolutely ludicrous, of course, and Elzar intended to discuss other potential workarounds with Stellan as soon as he returned. Until, then, however—might as well try it JJ-5145’s way. Elzar would make himself go through the motions of every single option one more time, just in case one of them—
“Wait.” He stared down at the screen before him, where several red lights had just turned green, or at least a promising orange. “Wait. Did that just work? Have we got positional thrusters?”
The astromechs in the quartermaster’s office all beeped and burbled cheerfully as a smile lit up his face. That bypass had worked…more or less. Elzar hadn’t regained full control over the thrusters, but he’d ignited them at one-third power.
“Also, sometimes repeating a method provides a different result,” JJ-5145 said, with a certain smugness he honestly deserved. “Within reason, of course.”
“I doubt the power we’ve got is enough to keep the station from crashing into Eiram forever,” Elzar said, “but that should work to keep us from burning up in the atmosphere, right?”
“Yes, we are no longer in imminent danger of death by incineration,” JJ-5145 said happily. “It is now ninety-eight point one percent likely that we will instead die on impact with the planet’s surface. This is excellent progress!”
Heady with hope, Elzar laughed out loud. At least he’d bought them valuable time. And if the positional thrusters could be activated to that level, then there was every reason to believe he might be able to bring them fully online.
At the moment, however, the only ways he could think of to do that involved interacting manually with the thruster mechanisms, which involved sending someone through unsurvivable radiation, stuff that would scramble even a droid…
Footsteps in the corridor just outside the quartermaster’s office made Elzar turn away from his work with a grin. “Get ready,” he said, “whoever you are, because I think you’re about to—Stellan?”
Stellan Gios shuffled toward him, one hand on the wall as though to remind him where it was, or which way was up. His face was white with shock, his eyes dead and unseeing. Elzar clutched one of Stellan’s arms to provide support; it seemed possible the man would collapse at any second.
“Elzar,” Stellan said. His voice cracked with the effort of speaking. “It came after me.”
“…what came after you?”
“Whatever it is. It’s hungry. It’s so hungry. And it’s not done with us—not even close—”
“The Drengir?” Which made no sense—if the Drengir had returned, they’d know—but the species’ rampant appetite for sentient flesh couldn’t help but come to mind.
“No. Worse. So—so much worse.” Tears welled in Stellan’s eyes.
“And I keep hearing it—shrii ka rai, ka rai—over and over—”
The station was on the brink of apocalypse and Stellan’s mind was clouded with nursery rhymes? What had happened to him? What could’ve done this to a Jedi as strong and proud as Stellan Gios?
Swiftly, Elzar ushered him into the quartermaster’s office, both to rest and to avoid his being seen by any of the stranded pilots. If they saw the head of Starlight Beacon at the point of collapse, the result would surely be panic.
The people out there thought their biggest problem was the impending crash of the station. Even moments before, Elzar would have agreed with them.
Now, however, he suspected the crash wasn’t nearly as dangerous as whatever else stalked the corridors of this station.