“Please repeat that for me,” Elzar Mann said evenly. This situation couldn’t get worse. Obviously he had misheard.
But he hadn’t. “There are three rathtars loose on the station,” Bell Zettifar confirmed. “The other rathtar shipment turned out to be false, and I assumed this one was, too. There’s no excuse for my error, and I—”
“Skip it.” Elzar took a deep breath. “Every strength has a corresponding weakness. For us, our strength in the Force gives us confidence in our decisions…but then we grow too accustomed to leaning on it.” Stellan had taught him that. “I might’ve opened the cargo hold, too.”
Stellan Gios had woken not long before; although he remained a shadow of his usual self, he had regained comprehension and composure. “Look at it this way: Of all our current problems, the rathtars should be the easiest to solve.”
The quartermaster’s office, filled as it was with droids, scarcely functioned as a meeting space any longer. Elzar wished they hadn’t moved the conversation here—but then, perhaps it was best that no civilian crew overheard them for a while. He said only, “Let’s get back to the plan. You said we could evacuate some people through the cargo bay.”
Bell still looked sheepish, but he nodded. “Yes, Master Elzar. I think there’s a way.”
As he explained the idea, Elzar took heart. Stellan, however, would require more convincing. “You’re talking about a level of explosive decompression that smaller ships probably can’t compensate for. The ships could crash into one another; the passengers could be killed before they even made it into space.”
“It’s risky,” Bell said, “but these people know the danger.”
Elzar nodded. “Besides, if the only other option we can offer is keeping them imprisoned on a station that’s still crashing, we owe them a better shot. Even if it’s not an ideal option—it’s a chance, perhaps the only one they’ve got.”
Stellan put one hand to his head; his skin was pale. Were they pushing him too hard? But he managed to say, “You’re right. It’s the only possibility we can give them now.”
As badly as Elzar wanted to share his ideas about reaching the positional thruster mechanisms, he decided to wait a while longer. Stellan needed more time to process this, and Bell was already burdened enough—and was about to carry yet more weight.
“Bell, thank you for all that you’ve done here. But now we need you back at the medical tower. We won’t be able to evacuate the badly injured through any conventional means, so we need you there to strategize.” He put one hand on Bell’s shoulder, a brief gesture he warmed with a smile. “Burryaga can stay here to help with the cargo bay evacuation.”
Apparently he didn’t need to console Bell about the assignment; not only did the apprentice not see it as a punishment, but he also lit up. That must have been where he truly wanted to be all the while. “Of course, sir. I’ll head there right away.”
Stellan nodded, as though he were still in a position to approve or disapprove. “Very good.”
Bell headed out, but paused at the door. “About the cargo bay escape plan—now they also have to get past the rathtars.”
Elzar sighed. “One problem at a time.”
Bell didn’t intend to hesitate on his way back to the medical tower; Starlight was running out of time, and that knowledge pressed down harder by the minute. But halfway there, Burryaga came across his path and growled a friendly greeting.
“Burry! I’m headed back to the medical tower.” Bell clasped his friend’s paw. “That sticks you with the rathtars, I’m afraid.”
Burryaga informed Bell that this was a debt that would have to be repaid eventually, ideally with Bell buying him a Wookiee-sized dinner at the best restaurant on Coruscant.
That’s it exactly, Bell thought. We believe we’re going to live. We have to believe it to make it possible at all.
He grinned up at his friend. “Deal.”
Nan had never considered herself a particularly unlucky person, but she was going to have to rethink that, because the minute she and Chancey returned to the docking bay level, so did a couple dozen other pilots, including Leox Gyasi of the Vessel. She ducked into a small alcove, but Leox seemed to have other priorities, hurrying back to his ship quickly enough not to notice her.
Chancey, who hadn’t bothered hiding, gave her a sidelong look. “You realize you were more likely to draw his attention by jumping for cover like that?”
“We shouldn’t have come,” Nan muttered.
“We’re probably safer if we get busted than if we don’t,” Chancey pointed out.
The idea of that stung Nan even worse than her fear of death. Her life was her own; she would not owe it to the Jedi. To be indebted to them would be a kind of living death, one Nan did not intend to endure. Better to perish in flame, gloriously free to the end.
Then it hit her—the reality of dying by fire, the agonizing pain of it—
“So.” A red-haired man appeared in front of them; he must have been just around the corner. Which meant he’d overheard it all, as his smug grin confirmed. “You two don’t want to be seen by the others. What exactly would you be busted for?”
“Smuggling,” Chancey immediately replied. “Why exactly aren’t you busting us?”
“I’ve got no desire to do the Jedi’s work for them,” he said. “Especially when it gives me the chance to make new friends instead. The name’s Koley Linn, and I’m thinking we can strike a bargain.”
Nan already knew this was going to be a bad bargain, one they’d have no choice but to accept.
Since not everyone spoke Shyriiwook, Leox Gyasi wound up translating the plan for everyone in the cargo bay. “At the moment, Elzar’s working out which cargo pilots are still aboard. The other ships will be assigned by lottery to those who can fly them. Every ship in the cargo bay will be filled to capacity, though nobody has to go if they don’t want. Yeah, that decompression’s gonna be violent. So is colliding with Eiram’s surface. So pick your poison.”
Most people immediately headed toward Elzar, ready to sign up for what looked like the only possible escape. A few, however, remained. Joss and Pikka Adren were deep in conversation next to their ship—and the hands they rested gently on its hull suggested they wouldn’t be quick to leave it behind. The Cerean pilot whose ship had a literal hole blown in the side stood there looking at it as though she could mend the hull through sheer force of will.
And then, of course, there were Affie and Geode. While Geode was putting up a good front, Affie’s dark eyes were wide with heartbreak. She whispered, “We have to abandon the Vessel?”
“Nope.” Leox took her hands in his. “The Vessel belongs to you and you alone. It’s your decision to make.”
Affie looked so frightened for a moment—before her resolve returned. Leox saw it in the squaring of her shoulders, the way she lifted her chin. “I’m staying with my ship. Maybe it’s crazy to still believe the Jedi have a way out of this, but I do believe it. And as long as there’s any chance at all, then I want to save the Vessel. But if you two want to go, please, get off this thing. I can handle the ship on my own, and you two still have jobs if—”
Leox spared her from having to finish that thought. “I’m with you, Little Bit.” Next to him, Geode loyally remained by her side, stalwart to the last.
Affie hesitated before nodding. “Okay. All together then.”
Koley Linn wished he’d had a cam droid over his shoulder to capture these ladies’ faces when he’d explained the plan. The little one’s jaw had dropped, and the older woman said, “Blow a hole through the bay doors? Do you have any idea how much firepower that takes?”
“A lot,” Koley replied, “but get enough ships together, and we can do it. Which is why we could use a couple extra hands to operate weapons on ships whose crews are, shall we say, not cooperating.”
“Then you all get sucked out into space through a jagged opening that’s lava-hot,” said the younger one, Nan. “You seriously think all the ships are going to make it through undamaged?”
“No, I think the ships that aren’t prepped—the ones that haven’t anchored themselves or set thrusters to reverse—are going to get sucked out first. They’ll be torn to scrap. But they’ll just widen the opening for the rest of us, who exit on our own power after.”
“I’m not sure that works,” said the older one, Chancey or something like it. “At any rate, it’s a lot longer shot than you’re making it out to be. Long enough that I suspect you’re not sharing all the dangers with everyone. Long enough to make sure your own ship leaves last, when the path is clear.”
Koley loved the moment when people realized just how badly he’d screwed them, and that they had no choice but to go along with it. “Put it this way. It’s not as long a shot at survival as you’ll have if you go it alone. And make no mistake—the Jedi aren’t going to save us. If they had any answers, we’d have heard them by now. They can’t even save their friends, so what do you think the chances are they’ll help us?”
Chancey and Nan shared a look, one that told him he was ahead.
These two women, whatever they were—they were hard. They were tough. They were used to doing what it took to stay alive. Koley had seen that look in the mirror too many times not to recognize it in somebody else.
People like that could capture the non-cooperating ships with heavier weapons, and his escape plan could become a reality.
Stellan Gios felt like half of himself. His body was moving, his brain thinking, absent any communion with his soul. Maybe this was what it was like to be a droid.
Still, he could go through the motions. With Starlight in imminent danger, he had to give what he could.
“So, we need to open up the cargo bay,” Elzar was saying to Burryaga, “to as many ships as we possibly can. That means getting some of the smaller ships in the main docking bay to the cargo bay—literally flying them through the station.”
Burryaga growled that opening up the station in this way would be hard to accomplish without explosives.
At that, Stellan had to speak. “…how can setting off another bomb possibly improve our situation?”
“We aren’t,” Elzar said. “We’re activating the retrofitting subsystems.”
This made no sense to Stellan. “Retrofitting—that’s meant to facilitate restructuring of the station at a space dock. It’s not going to magically create a flight path through Starlight.”
“No, it won’t. However, it will allow us to collapse certain walls and floors, opening up broader spaces, and those can work as flight paths—at least, for our current emergency purposes.” Elzar tapped the head of one of the many astromechs surrounding them, which obligingly began projecting a holographic cross section of the lower half of Starlight Beacon. “The Nihil saboteur, whoever he, she, it, or they might be, set blocks on virtually every main operating system throughout Starlight. One of the only functions left completely intact? The retrofitting subsystem. They probably assumed it was too obscure to worry about. But that subsystem lets us reconfigure almost the entire internal workings of the station. When we reconfigure, smaller ships will have room to maneuver through Starlight Beacon.”
“How do we open that up without destroying everything else in those areas?” Stellan asked.
Elzar gave him a look. “We don’t. We should consider everything on Starlight Beacon already lost, except for the lives aboard. Once we’ve saved those, then we can worry about hardware. But not until.”
Stellan finally saw the sense of it and nodded. Burryaga also agreed with this plan—it might be drastic, but they were in a drastic situation.
“If it works,” Elzar added, “we might be able to open up a downward shaft nearer the middle of the station—and then I can take a repair pod through the radiation levels, retrieve a suit, and get down to the positional thrusters near Starlight’s base. If I can do that, then maybe I can get them one hundred percent online.”
The plan had value. “You’ve made a brilliant leap, Elzar. Good work.” Elzar grinned back.
Inside, however, Stellan could only think that he would be no help in opening the cargo bay doors. The Force was no longer his to command.
After a long, difficult journey back, Bell finally reached the medical tower. He emerged to smiles from the few overworked sentient medical staffers, but he couldn’t smile in return until he reached Indeera Stokes and Ember. When he entered the room where he’d left his Master, he saw her still unconscious but alive, resting on her bed, with Ember loyally at her side.
And at some point, Master Indeera must have roused a little, because her hand lay atop Ember’s head.
At least, it did until Ember realized Bell had returned. She leapt up, bounding toward him so joyfully that Bell couldn’t help laughing out loud.
“Hey, girl,” he murmured as he bent to give her a good scratch. “Good job taking care of Master Indeera.” Ember wriggled in joy, her tail thumping against the floor.
That moment of happiness proved fleeting. Bell had spent the journey back to the medical tower wondering how he might be able to transport some or all of the patients to the cargo bay, so they had some chance of escaping the station. His few phantom plans evaporated as he looked around the makeshift medbay. These people couldn’t be transported out of the tower in less than a few hours, and some were too badly injured to be safely moved at all.
Just outside one of the viewports he could see the Eiram medical cruiser, stocked with doctors and med droids and every possible supply, still floating helplessly near Starlight.
Air locks every few meters in countless passages through this station, Bell thought, and not one they can use to dock.
Unless…unless I can change that.