When Stellan saw the medical tower floating free, he felt a wave of gratitude. The plan—radical as it had been—had worked. He stared out the window of the quartermaster’s office, watching as the Eiram medical cruiser brought the tower closer with its tractor beam, then proceeded to connect their air locks. Every person within that tower, most important the dozens who had come to the Jedi seeking assistance and shelter, had been saved.
Yes, the people of the galaxy would hear of the success of the Nihil attack—but now they would also hear of how so many had been saved through the ingenuity and courage of a Jedi.
Other ships had begun appearing in the darkness of space overhead: little craft, most of them, but they’d responded to the distress call. These people—not soldiers or planetary representatives, but private citizens—had braved the threat of the Nihil to travel hostile, dangerous hyperspace routes, in the hope of aiding Starlight Beacon.
We are all the Republic, Stellan thought. It had never been truer than it was in this moment.
He only wished there was some way they could help.
But there had to be something—a plan they hadn’t yet envisioned, a trick still hiding up their sleeves. The same inspiration that had come to Bell would come to them as long as they didn’t give up.
The good news: It wasn’t a rathtar descending toward Elzar Mann and Burryaga.
The bad news: It was two rathtars.
Elzar leapt upward, slashing widely with his lightsaber, less with the aim of a fatal stroke, more in the hope of scaring the beasts into retreat. Unfortunately, these rathtars seemed to like shiny objects. Their tentacles flailed out toward Elzar, one of them lashing his wrist but failing to achieve a grip.
Elzar landed back on the deck in a combat-ready crouch, lightsaber still at the ready. Burryaga leapt up into the air, too, taking his turn slashing at the rathtar tentacles—but one thick tendril wrapped around the Wookiee’s midsection, holding him in its powerful grip.
Elzar thought fast. Jumping up toward the rathtars might save time, but it also made for vulnerability midair. Instead he dashed to the service ladder on the side; normally hidden within a maintenance shaft, it had been exposed in the newly cavernous space of the cargo bay when they’d collapsed the walls. He climbed as quickly as he could, desperate to reach Burryaga before more harm was done.
Burryaga, however, wasn’t done defending himself. He extended his claws to the fullest—a sight Elzar had never seen before, and a fearsome one—to slash at the rathtar that held him. It screeched in pain and let go.
For one instant, Elzar smiled. Burryaga would use the Force to catch himself, Elzar would jump down to him, and maybe the rathtars had learned their lesson.
They hadn’t. The other rathtar bolted down the wall to grab Burryaga again. This time, its tentacle wrapped around his neck—tightly enough to suffocate anyone to death, even a Wookiee. Burryaga clawed at the tentacle again, but this rathtar was made of sterner stuff than the last. It only yowled in anticipation as it brought the Wookiee closer to its wide, hungry mouth.
The docking bay was all but empty. Almost everyone within it seemed distracted by the explosion that had just shuddered through the station, not to mention the detached tower that seemed to be floating around outside. Nan didn’t bother going to look. She didn’t care.
What mattered was that the few people currently focused on the present place and moment were all members of Koley Linn’s small team.
Nearby, Chancey gave her a swift nod. An instant later, Koley’s explosive went off in the docking bay.
Nan ducked, dodging debris and shrapnel; it wasn’t much of a bomb, but it had decimated the ship it had been placed under, and now the bay was filling with smoke and screaming. She charged forward, heading straight toward the ship she’d been told to target. Her boots pounded against the deck, go go go go—
“Unhh!” Nan tripped over something and went sprawling onto the deck. A smoldering bit of metal on the floor either burned or cut a painful slash on her forearm. Worst of all, she looked over to see that she’d been tripped by none other than Addie Hollow, who was staring at her as if looks could kill.
Looks couldn’t kill. Nan could. She lunged to her feet, ready to take Addie down—but halted when Koley Linn shouted, “Nobody move!”
Both she and Addie turned as one to see Koley standing near the center of the docking bay, his blaster aimed at a small child who lay sprawled on the floor, wailing pitifully. Everyone had frozen, Nan saw, both the members of their team and the others, who had begun fighting back faster than she would’ve thought possible. Even the stupefied Stellan Gios had emerged, lightsaber in hand, in battle stance at the far end of the bay.
It’s a standoff, Nan realized.
Koley Linn called out, “Let me explain how this is going to work.”
Though smoke continued to roll past, misty or opaque in turns, it looked as if everyone knew better than to take their chance with such momentary cover.
The small child on the floor wailed, and for one instant Koley vaguely felt a sensation he’d all but banished years ago: shame. There wasn’t much pride to be found in a hostage so completely incapable of defending itself.
But he wasn’t here for pride. Koley had the hostage; he had the element of surprise; he had the advantage. That was exactly how he liked it. The transient shame faded, never to return.
“There’s a way off this station for those willing to take it,” he said. “The rest of you can take your chances with the Jedi. But us? We’re getting on the ships with the best weaponry and we’re blowing through the hull of Starlight Beacon.”
“You can’t,” said Stellan Gios, with more strength than Koley would’ve thought the guy could still muster. “The hangar’s magnetized—”
“Yeah, that would be a problem, if we were shooting our way out with our blasters. But the blasters are for you guys”—Koley waggled the muzzle slightly, indicating some individuals he’d consider shooting first—“and don’t worry. If I shoot at you, I won’t miss. Shipboard weapons—that kind of firepower won’t be held in by the magnetic seal you have in here, and don’t think I don’t know it.” Typical Jedi, assuming they knew everything and nobody else had a clue.
Stellan remained undaunted. “Do you have any idea how long it would take to blast through the doors? Hours, probably—time we don’t have.”
From the back, Joss Adren piped up. “Plus you’d space the rest of us and our ships!”
Koley kept his eyes on Stellan, by far the biggest threat in the room. “Face it—your ships are lost already. Nobody here has to get spaced if they clear out.” He didn’t mind killing whoever he had to kill, but in this case cleaner was also faster, and time was precious. “As for the hull—you haven’t done the calculations, Stell. I have. We can punch through it in about forty-five minutes. It’s about an hour before we’re fully in atmosphere and things get even uglier. So I’d like to get started right away.”
The child on the floor near Koley suddenly stopped wailing. He half turned to see a thick patch of smoke clearing—and Geode, now standing, silent and resolute, between Koley and his former hostage.
How does that damn thing move? Koley thought, not for the first time. He gestured to his nearest co-conspirator, the girl called Nan, who swung her rifle around to target the child in his stead. Then Koley grinned. “You’ve gotten in my way for the last time, you idiot rock.”
Geode didn’t react. The guy put up a good front; Koley would give him that much.
“No idea how anybody ever took you seriously,” he said, holding his blaster at the hip for the most accurate shot. Koley wasn’t sure exactly how much fire it would take to turn a Vintian into rubble, but he was about to learn. “Now it’s time to take you out.”
Koley fired—
—in the instant his finger squeezed the trigger, he remembered something Affie Hollow had said before: Vintians can decide whether to be magnetically sealed or not—
—and the sound and flash of his first fire lanced through Koley’s midsection.
He staggered backward. Geode stood in front of him, smoldering; the guy hadn’t even moved.
But Geode had refracted Koley’s own blasterfire directly back at him, which was why there was now a new hole in his gut.
Koley collapsed to the ground. The last thing he ever saw was Geode standing over his head, just like a tombstone.
Affie Hollow had understood Geode’s plan immediately; she’d also been pretty sure Koley Linn was dumb enough to fall for it. So she’d focused on getting ready to stop Nan from making good on her implicit threat to the small child still sprawled on the deck nearby.
In the first instant after Koley fired—when he was still staggering backward—Affie launched herself at Nan. They both went down, falling at the same time Koley Linn dropped dead.
Prepared to fight, Affie scrambled to her feet again, but several of Linn’s co-conspirators, not interested in a fight where they had no advantage, turned and ran. Nan was among these; she took off at impressive speed, vanishing into the darker shadows at the edge of the docking bay. Affie watched her go, inwardly seething, but determined to stay focused on what really mattered.
So she turned back to Geode. The child’s mother already had her infant in her arms and was leaning against the Vintian in profound gratitude. Affie said, “Are you all right?” Obviously he was, but she’d feel better once she’d heard it from Geode himself.
But at that moment, Stellan called out, “Listen to me! Those of you who cast your lots with Koley Linn—I don’t blame you for being afraid. I don’t blame you for being desperate. You must now turn over your weapons, but if you do so, I give you my word as a Jedi that none of you will suffer any further consequence.”
It took only a moment for people to begin complying. Affie could feel the anger in the room diminishing, replaced by—well, the best thing it could be called was “resignation,” but it was a lot less volatile.
“We’re looking for a way out,” Stellan continued. “We will find a way out. We need you to help us find it. We need you to believe.”
Elzar watched in horror as Burryaga—still choking in the rathtar’s grip—slashed out wildly with his lightsaber. The other rathtar tried to grab the shiny thing with a tentacle and came close enough to knock the lightsaber out of Burryaga’s hand. It tumbled downward, and Elzar reached out with the Force to grab it—
—but it was hard, so hard, as though even reaching for the Force caused pain, and it responded so feebly—
—and when Elzar finally caught it, he felt exhausted, as though he’d been trying to levitate for hours.
Is this what the other Jedi have been struggling through all this time?
Burryaga, still struggling within the rathtar’s grip, had at least managed to get his neck free. He roared to Elzar not to worry about him; the people in the cargo bay needed to escape.
“Stop being noble!” Elzar had little patience with this kind of thing. “I need you to help me with the cargo bay doors!”
But Burryaga growled that Elzar could do it. He was strong enough. He was inventive enough. If any Jedi on this station could do it alone, it would be Elzar Mann.
He also wanted Elzar to tell Bell goodbye.
“Burryaga, no!” But Elzar could see that the two rathtars, now working together, were slithering farther and farther overhead, beyond Elzar’s reach. If he exerted through the Force with everything he had left, maybe he could catch them…
…and afterward, Elzar would have no remaining strength to open the doors.
Elzar swore under his breath. Tears stung his eyes, but he refused to break down. He could only honor the Wookiee’s sacrifice.
Their job was to save the people in this bay, and that meant letting Burryaga go.
Bell Zettifar lifted his head.
One of the Eiram medics looked at him curiously. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “It’s Master Indeera who needs your help.”
The Force told him that Burryaga was in trouble aboard Starlight Beacon. It was as though Bell could feel his friend’s desperation, the wild need to lash out in every direction at once. What was happening?
No way to know. No way to go to Burry’s aid.
Bell walked across the floor of the Eiram medical cruiser—newly laden with the wounded and injured from the medical tower—with Ember at his heels. Through the viewport he could see the bottom half of Starlight Beacon below them, on the very verge of entering Eiram’s atmosphere. At that point, it was doomed.
“That moron.” Chancey Yarrow paced the length of the small, lower-level room where they’d taken refuge. “If he hadn’t tried grandstanding, we might’ve had the jump on them! Instead he wanted to take a hostage? I can’t believe we let that guy take the lead.”
Nan sat in a corner of the room, exhausted and even sootier than before. It looked like their only hope of survival was the Jedi, which was worse, to her, than no hope at all.
The Jedi weren’t even bothering to capture them. It was borderline insulting.
Chancey ran a hand through her hair, then refocused. “All right. Koley said we might regroup here, which didn’t happen, but suggests there’s something in this area worth having.”
Nan didn’t hold out much hope, but she began going through the nearest storage locker. It was crammed full of disparate stuff—suggesting that Koley Linn had been doing some low-level stealing during his time on Starlight Beacon. But what good was any of this junk to them now?
Then her hand closed around thick, silvery material. She pulled it up into the light and thought it didn’t look like much, but her companion gasped.
“Radiation suits,” Chancey breathed. “Thank every god in every religion on every planet there ever was.”
“Our biggest problem isn’t radiation.” Nan figured the suits might keep them from burning for a while, which meant only that they’d die by being slammed into the ground at maximum velocity instead. Not exactly a win.
But Chancey said, “That’s right. Our biggest problem is gravity. Our best defense against gravity is the station’s positional thrusters, which are only partly online. We’ve heard them talking about repairing them, but they can’t, because they don’t have radiation suits. But we do!”
This at least sounded promising. Nan said, “Do you know how to repair the thrusters?”
“I invented a whole new type of gravitic weapon. I think I can handle the most basic antigrav mechanisms in existence.” Chancey grinned. Already she was shrugging off her vest, ready to don the radiation suit. “If this station’s positional thrusters can work at all—and apparently they can—then I can get them boosted to full power at least temporarily. That ought to be enough to get Starlight back into space and save our necks.”
Nan considered this. “We’ll also save everyone else on the station—including the Jedi.”
Chancey shrugged. “No plan is perfect.”