There was little enough good news at the moment, and Elzar Mann was grateful for any. This, however, would have given him some measure of joy at any time.
“Confirmed,” said JJ-5145 as he wheeled through the web of cables that networked the astromechs in the quartermaster’s office. “The Ataraxia launched clear of the destruction of the other half of the station. Presumably many individuals aboard the top half of the station evacuated with the ship.”
Avar lives. Elzar had not sensed her death, which surely he would have. Still, the confirmation lit one spark of light in his dark mood.
JJ-5145 jerked his head side-to-side in apparent confusion. “These trajectories for the top half of the station do not compute. It ought to have fallen even faster than it did.”
“No doubt the Jedi aboard used the Force to hold the station together as long as they could.” Elzar had felt the titanic effort of it—the utterly heroic attempt—but had taken heed from its failure. He’d already considered trying something like that with this half of Starlight (all that remained of Starlight, now); it would mean fully reconnecting to the Force again in a way he hadn’t since Ledalau, in a way he did not yet fully trust again, but if that was what it took, Elzar would do it. However, between the loss of so many Jedi and the eerie disturbance in the Force aboard, he suspected they’d have no better luck than those on the top half of the station.
The Force couldn’t solve everything. Sometimes even the most powerful Jedi had to deal with the material world as they found it. This was one of those times.
Get the positional thrusters online, Elzar told himself, and worry about the limitations of the Force later.
But his next task promised to be harder than either.
Stellan Gios drifted in and out of—consciousness? Sleep? He couldn’t tell the difference and no longer cared. His body demanded rest; his weary mind was all too ready to give it.
Then a hand shook his shoulder, forcing him to acknowledge the world beyond his skin. “Yes,” he rasped. “Yes, I’m awake. I’m here.”
“Stellan, it’s Elzar.” Elzar’s tone was gentled, the way it might have been if he were speaking to a frightened child. “Do you understand me?”
“I understand.” Stellan managed to push himself into a seated position so he could look Elzar in the eye. The dismay he saw there made Stellan wonder if he looked as bad as Indeera Stokes had; he felt only vaguely more conscious. “Are we—is the station—”
“Still falling, but the positional thrusters are back online at one-third power. If we can boost them even to two-thirds, we can remain aloft a long time, probably enough for help. And if we can boost them all the way, we can hang on indefinitely.”
Stellan’s mood brightened—not much, but more than he would’ve thought possible. “Excellent. How is the top half of the station faring?”
Elzar took a deep breath. “They tried using the Force to hold the station together, to slow its descent. But it didn’t work.”
“Then they need our assistance—”
“No,” Elzar said. “Not that we have any assistance to give. But they’re past that now. I’m sorry, Stellan—the top half of Starlight Beacon has been destroyed, along with all aboard.”
Estala Maru. Every Republic staffer. Every civilian aboard. So many other Jedi—every single one of them, gone, and the Republic humbled—no, humiliated by the Nihil. It was a failure so complete, so appalling, that Stellan could scarcely comprehend it.
The symbol of the Jedi. Their public pride and joy. Under my watch, Starlight was destroyed.
Elzar cocked his head. “Stellan? Can you hear me?”
Of course Stellan could, but he couldn’t react to it. Couldn’t act at all. Whatever evil lurked aboard this station had stolen more than the Force. It had stolen his pride, his will, his tongue. If only it could steal his pain.
In the cockpit of the Vessel, Affie and Geode were thinking hard. Ever since their ship had become the makeshift communications center for the remainder of Starlight Beacon, Affie had felt a greater sense of responsibility for the station’s welfare. It was easier to work saving others’ lives than to sit and be frightened for her own.
“So, we’ve figured out how to reach Eiram’s communications networks, and we can talk to the planet and any ships in our immediate vicinity,” she mused out loud. “They’re connecting our messages to Coruscant via relay, but we can’t contact anyone else who might be farther away.”
Geode, still deep in thought, said nothing. He knew when to let Affie talk through a problem.
“The biggest issue with that is, we can’t issue a wider distress call. All those Republic ships diverted to deal with the earlier Nihil raids can only get here so quickly. But there must be other ships, civilian ships, that could and would arrive to help us, if they only knew we needed help.”
A screen on the Vessel’s console shifted to a view of Eiram’s full satellite network. It looked like any other small planet’s: crisscrossing orbits, small silvery satellites bouncing signals around that world. It looked…vulnerable.
“Great thinking, Geode,” Affie said. “It’s an easy target, isn’t it? If you have slice codes, which we do. And if we, let’s say, ‘commandeer’ the planet’s satellite network, we can send distress calls all over!”
Penalties for interfering with planetary comms systems were extremely severe. Most people, upon hearing Affie’s suggestion, would immediately have said something about getting into trouble with Eiram for taking those steps, or about being censured or punished by the Jedi for overstepping their (nonexistent) authority. Geode didn’t bother. He wasn’t the kind of guy who wasted time asking for permission, not when lives were on the line.
Within moments, the satellite network began to glow various shades of orange as signals from the Vessel started giving them new instructions.
The distress call that went out was generic in form, one that spoke in computer-generated tones. (Affie had no problem taking the initiative to seize a whole planet’s communications network, but she drew the line at literally speaking for the Republic.) It stated the situation in the driest, briefest possible terms. And yet it stunned all who heard it:
Starlight Beacon has fallen under Nihil attack. Hundreds are trapped aboard. The top half of the station is already destroyed; the bottom half requires immediate help. All ships capable of providing any assistance are asked to travel to the Eiram system immediately.
Many who heard this signal believed it to be a prank. Others thought it a propaganda move by the Nihil, one that exaggerated the actual damage.
However, those worlds and ships that had already witnessed what the Nihil could do—they believed. Within mere minutes, spacecraft had started preparing for the leap into hyperspace. Some planetary leaders and ruling councils went so far as to begin larger-scale relief efforts, readying flotillas and caravans of ships well equipped with medical supplies.
Word of the message did reach Coruscant itself, and it was swiftly passed on to Chancellor Lina Soh. She sat between Voru and Matari, reading the message transcript in increasing horror. Even through the last hours of suspense, she had always believed that the brilliant minds aboard Starlight Beacon would find answers. The Jedi always did. They would protect the station and those aboard it from the worst.
Instead—half of Starlight gone? The greatest of all the Great Works, ripped apart, burning up?
I should’ve called for a civilian effort before, Soh realized. She hadn’t done so in part because it had seemed so impossible that Starlight Beacon could truly be falling. But she would amplify this call and add her own. That, at least, she could do. May the Force allow her to be in time!
Then she remembered the Jedi she had met—the ones who had helped save her boy at the ill-fated Republic fair—the ones who had celebrated with her, via holo, only days before. So many of them were already dead.
And Lina Soh, chancellor of the greatest Republic the galaxy had ever known, had been powerless to prevent it.
Among the first to hear the message were those who already knew the horror, even more fully than anyone on Starlight’s bottom half. They were those few who had escaped from the top half before the fiery end.
Avar Kriss stood on Eiram’s surface, soot and grit marring her clothes, blinking against the bright sunlight. The dark streaks that marked the incineration of the last fragments of the station—of Maru, and of so many others—were already dissipating into the atmosphere. As gruesome as they were to witness, Avar could hardly bear the fact that they were vanishing. Soon there would be no trace left of those people, that station, the hopes of the entire Republic.
Her mind went to Elzar, then to Stellan, both of whom she knew must be struggling valiantly to save the bottom half. She closed her eyes and willed them strength. The Force will guide them. We will not lose the station entire.
The message also reached those who weren’t shocked by the information at all.
“Half of it already burning!” Marchion Ro stood at the center of the Gaze Electric’s bridge, his arms outstretched. Even here, he wore his helmet; his smiles were not for the likes of others to see. “Half of it doomed! The Republic, the mighty Jedi, forced to go begging for help from the galaxy at large! They are nothing compared with the might of the Nihil!”
“They are nothing compared with the Eye of the Nihil,” said Ghirra breathily. Another plus of wearing the mask: Ghirra couldn’t see him rolling his eyes.
“Ships are responding to Starlight’s distress call,” said Thaya Ferr from her station off to the side
“Small civilian craft, mostly. Nothing with the power to change the course of events.”
Ro shrugged. “Let them try their best. They’ll beg for help, they’ll turn to Corellia, they’ll look high and low for solutions. But we’ve blocked them at every turn. They won’t be able to prevent the full, complete destruction of Starlight Beacon. After that, none will be able to deny that the Nihil are the true masters of the Outer Rim.”
Ghirra Starros looked pale. Surely she had understood the implications of her actions? Was she fretting about that child of hers? If so, she should’ve thought about her offspring’s fate before. Ro had little patience for those with such myopic perception, or such weak stomachs. KA-R9 hovered close by, as though the droid could cut the station to shreds himself. (Which, given the devastating vibroscalpels he was equipped with, was probably true.)
Meanwhile, Thaya Ferr gave Ro a cheerful nod, no more, before turning back to her tasks. Her smile, though bright, lacked the near-intoxicated zeal of most of his Nihil followers. She didn’t believe in the dream he sold the rank and file…but she did Ro’s bidding gladly anyway, and he’d begun to believe she always would. At any rate, she would never try to stab him in the back, which was more than he could say for anyone else among the Nihil elite.
Time, he decided, to bring Ferr more closely into his operations. A loyal assistant was worth ten cargo holds’ worth of coaxium.
Ferr said, “What now, my lord?”
“When their desperate attempts at salvation have degenerated into chaos…when no one will know or care who has crowded into the system where Starlight will die…the Gaze Electric will join the throng.” Ghirra’s intel had confirmed, for Ro, that his ship remained utterly unknown to the Republic. They would be one spacecraft among many, no more. “And together, we will watch Starlight Beacon burn.”
Every astromech aboard Starlight had been networked by this point; Elzar only hoped that what they lost in increased glitchiness would be made up for by greater computing power. He’d exhausted every option for activating the positional thrusters that didn’t require him to go into the mechanical workings themselves—assuming they could even get through the surrounding areas to reach those workings, which were currently on fire. Hopefully the droids would come up with a third path, and soon.
In the meantime, Elzar had somebody to save.
He sat with Stellan in a quiet cargo hold in the back of the Vessel. (The quartermaster’s office, chock-full of bleeping and blinking droids, no longer counted as “peaceful.”) Stellan had taken Elzar’s suggestion with troubling willingness, and his stare remained unfocused—a shadow of what his sharp gaze had so recently been.
“Without the Force,” Stellan said, still gazing into a vague distance. “This is where you’ve been. Where I am now.”
“You’re not fully cut off from the Force.” Elzar didn’t know exactly what was plaguing the Jedi on Starlight Beacon, but he refused to believe they could be severed from the Force entirely. The Force was too vast for that; its power was eternal and universal, and would always be. “It’s just more difficult for you to call upon right now.”
“And this is what you chose for yourself, in order to turn away from darkness.” Stellan’s face creased in a small, sad smile. “I wouldn’t have had the courage.”
Elzar couldn’t have heard that correctly. “What?”
“I’ve never asked myself who I would be without my control of the Force. Without the Jedi Order to structure and define my life.”
“Because you’re a great Jedi, one of the greatest of us all,” Elzar said. “Stellan, surely you don’t doubt that?”
Stellan shrugged, his gaze still looked far past Elzar, past this room. “Greatness can mean a lot of different things. I’ve always believed it meant—duty, honor, selflessness. But how can you be selfless if you’ve never defined yourself? Because I never have, Elzar. I’ve lived as the Jedi exemplar—poured myself into a mold shaped by others. Take away my ability to use the Force, and I find myself left as…as a man I hardly know.”
Elzar put his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Stellan. You’re hurting. This isn’t the time to question your entire existence—”
“It’s exactly the time.” Stellan shook his head and, at last, met Elzar’s eyes; the openness Elzar saw there, the vulnerability, was something the two of them had not shared since they were Padawans. Stellan had shielded himself so slowly, so gradually, that Elzar hadn’t even noticed it.
My friend has returned to me, Elzar thought, the one I didn’t even realize was gone.
Stellan continued, “You’ve had the strength to walk your own path. Even if that path was crooked at times, it was yours and yours alone. You and Avar, you’ve always known who you were. You’ve never let the Order do your thinking for you. You always shone…that little bit brighter.”
“You’re hardly a pushover,” Elzar protested. “You’ve stood up to the Council before.”
“But it’s different, and you know it, don’t you?” Stellan glanced down for a moment before continuing, “You’ve always known I was wary of the—the intimacy between you and Avar.”
This was the last topic Elzar had dreamed would come up, and very nearly the last he wanted to mention at the moment. “I—uhm—”
“You thought it was because I obeyed the rules, but that wasn’t the whole truth. Really, I was jealous, that the two of you had a connection I didn’t share.” Stellan cocked his head, studying Elzar as though they hadn’t seen each other in a long while. “A constellation of three stars, but two were much closer together.”
Elzar felt his throat tighten. “But you were our polestar. Our guide. Don’t you know that?”
Stellan took a deep breath. “I’m glad you think so.”
They needed to get to work; as important as this conversation was, and as much as they needed to return to it, this was not the day. “I don’t know what injury the Force has suffered,” Elzar began, “or whether it’s our ability to connect to the Force that’s devastating us so. Regardless, you’ve taken the brunt of it. Orla taught me a meditation technique—a kind of self-healing. It might help. Will you try this with me?”
Stellan nodded. It seemed that he trusted Elzar completely.
Now Elzar had to trust himself.
“Close your eyes,” Elzar said as he did the same. In his mind’s eye, he pictured Orla Jareni standing on the Ledalau beach. Behind her rolled the eternal tides.
You see the Force as an ocean, Orla had said on their first day of the meditation retreat. But you’ve fallen into the habit of believing that the ocean is something you can control. That’s the first step toward thinking of the Force merely as a tool to be wielded however you wish. No ocean obeys any living creature—high time you remembered that.
Elzar couldn’t re-create that experience for Stellan, nor did he think it was what was needed. Stellan knew too much about powerlessness, at the moment. What he could do was find that serenity within his own mind, and share it as fully as possible.
He would not call upon the Force from any external source—only from what he found inside himself.
It took courage for Stellan to brace himself outside of the Force’s guidance. It also took courage for Elzar to fully return to the Force, to believe in his ability to wield it fully once again.
Before long, he imagined he could hear the ocean. Elzar thought perhaps Stellan heard it, too.
Leox Gyasi had had more fun in his life than he was having on this particular day, but if he couldn’t enjoy riding on a Wookiee’s shoulders just a little bit…why, then, he might as well be dead. So he let himself grin as he prepped one more air lock, then shouted, “Get clear!”
His small team got clear, Leox triggered the mechanism, and SHOOMP—the air lock shut.
“That’s got us about seventy-five percent of the way,” he said, remaining on Burryaga’s shoulders. “You about ready to try this cockamamie scheme of yours?”
Young Bell Zettifar managed to smile. “It’s not cocka—whatever you said. But yeah. It’s almost time. We just have to make sure the routes in and out are clear, that they’ll work like they’re supposed to.”
Leox sure as hell hoped they would—because then at least a few people had a chance to survive.
Once Stellan was resting again, Elzar studied his sleeping countenance for a few moments. Although Stellan’s energy remained low, he seemed to be a little more like himself. Maybe, when he woke, he’d be back to himself enough to help Elzar with some of the countless decisions that had to be made.
No. Elzar could make those decisions on his own; what he truly wanted was some basic sense of calm. To find something pure and good that would cast out the anger within. To know that someone else was with him in this struggle.
Only one person in the galaxy ever made Elzar feel that way.
Avar, he thought, closing his eyes again as he called her telepathically. Avar, please, be with me. Be with me here for just one moment.
It wasn’t as though she could hear the words inside his head, much less reply. But there were other forms of communication through the Force, other ways of understanding and being understood.
Elzar filled his mind with memories of her: the sound of her voice, the way she dueled in the lightsaber ring, even the scent of her skin. The more real she became in his mind, the more chance he had of—
And then he heard it.
Just for a moment. Just a brief sense of melody. But still.
It was the song of the Force as Avar Kriss heard it—and for this instant, she had gifted it to him.
The shock and delight of it broke his concentration. Elzar was back in the present, as far away from Avar Kriss as ever. Yet he was stronger for that moment of communion.
He hoped that Avar, whatever she was doing, whatever troubles she faced, had shared a moment when she heard the waves on the sea.
Both far away and very near, Avar levitated with her arms outstretched, calling upon the song of the Force to sustain them all and give them strength as every Jedi in or near Starlight Beacon fought to save the station and all those aboard. Every individual was a note in the greatest, most meaningful chord she had ever known.
Between those notes lay another sound, so subtle she barely recognized it: the sound of the waves, the roaring of the sea.