Usually, in a firefight, the one who pulled their weapon first had the advantage.
It didn’t work for Chancey Yarrow.
Chancey fired her fusion laser at the Nihil saboteurs, striking the Ithorian, Werrera, in the gut. But both Cale and Leyel dodged expertly, and even Werrera managed to hurl a heavy pipe at Nan’s head before he fell. Nan hit the floor, letting the pipe clatter harmlessly behind her as she crawled back toward it. His weapon would soon become hers.
Leyel threw some kind of projectile as well—Nan didn’t get a good look at it—but whatever it was struck Chancey in the temple. She staggered backward but didn’t fall. Instead Chancey braced herself behind a metal column, catching her breath while waiting to see what the others might do next. Werrera lay on the floor, exposed and barely moving; anyone who had fought with the Nihil had seen enough death to know he wouldn’t live much longer.
From her place on the floor, Nan looked up at Chancey. By this time Nan had curled her hand around the edge of the pipe; it was still warm from Werrera’s hand. It felt good to be armed again.
But Chancey shook her head. “Don’t throw anything yet,” she muttered, barely audible over the heavy whir-hum of machinery surrounding them. “We do the wrong thing down here, we could wind up damaging the equipment so badly that getting the thrusters back online would be impossible. I can’t even fire again unless I know I’ve got them dead in my sights.”
So they just had to wait for Cale and Leyel to set the terms of the fight? Nan wanted to scream with frustration. Her hand tightened on the length of pipe as she reminded herself—she’d have an outlet for her anger soon enough.
A protocol droid aboard the Eiram medical cruiser, which must have been taken along because this mission was considered “diplomatic,” didn’t have that much to do—which meant he was focusing all his attention on Bell Zettifar, much to Bell’s amusement.
“But, sir!” protested the silvery droid as it tottered along after Bell into the medical cruiser’s launch bay. “You’ve only just escaped from Starlight Beacon!”
“They still need help,” Bell said, scanning the bay for the shuttle he’d been granted access to. “That makes it my responsibility to get back there if I can.”
The protocol droid would not be easily convinced. “But if nobody can yet exit Starlight, how can you possibly hope to enter it?”
“Remember, they’ve opened the cargo bay.” It was the last place Burryaga had been seen—and the first place Bell intended to search for him. “From that point I can access the rest of the station.”
“The station is unstable! On the verge of breaking up! Which is why no rescue vessels have been sent in—”
“It’s risky,” Bell agreed. “We couldn’t ask anyone else to make the attempt. But the Force is with me, and I know this station, and—and these are my people. It’s my job to help them if I can.”
Probably the protocol droid had been programmed to keep diplomatic envoys out of harm’s way if at all possible, because he waved his stiff metal arms about in dismay as Bell boarded the shuttle. “Sir, if you could only wait, perhaps more favorable conditions will arise. You must reconsider!”
Bell shook his head. “Starlight is almost out of time.”
In the end, Elzar had insisted that his vehicle for the trip through the station would be a little one-person maintenance skimmer pod, the sort of thing intended only for minor hull repairs and other exterior odd jobs. Stellan had recommended something sturdier—the pods weren’t intended for anything as hazardous as this, and a handful of single-pilot craft remained—but he said nothing as Elzar boarded.
He won’t listen to me, Stellan thought. The only person with a chance of getting through to him would be Avar.
The third star in their constellation. The light in the night sky that Stellan had turned from, all because of a disagreement about tactics—one that now seemed shortsighted, even petty. How could they have let the Nihil, destroyers of so much, damage their friendship, too? That, Stellan now saw, was the greatest error either of them had ever made—and ironically, given that it had set them at odds, it was a mistake they had made equally, together.
He’d tell Avar that he hadn’t appreciated her enough, should they ever meet again. Their constellation would shine in the firmament once more.
Seen from outside, what remained of Starlight Beacon looked even more broken and doomed than Bell would’ve expected—and he’d expected it to be bad. But his eyes widened as he took in the full horror: the bent, broken metal beams jabbing upward from the ugly break, the few standing walls from the break level that revealed where rooms—and people—had been, the forbidding darkness of a station largely illuminated only by emergency lights, so that it glowed sickly orange in the dark.
Worst of all, the curve of Eiram’s surface had come to cover almost the entire horizon, and Bell could feel the subtle resistance of the first traces of planetary atmosphere. They had so little time.
He steered the shuttle around the curve of Starlight’s hull, directing his full attention toward the cargo bay. Yes, he’d come here to help anyone and everyone he could, but his friend Burryaga remained foremost in his thoughts. Master Stellan had told him enough about Burryaga’s disappearance for Bell to know that the odds weren’t good. Still, his brain kept supplying possible ways his friend might have survived: Burryaga could’ve managed to squeeze through an air lock on an upper level. Or, if he got free of the rathtars in time, he might’ve been able to put on his atmospheric suit and strap in, which means he wouldn’t have been sucked into space when the bay doors opened.
If Bell could think of those possibilities, then Burryaga could’ve, too.
He brought his shuttle in closer to the hull as he approached the cargo bay—within twenty meters. As he did so, Bell felt a tiny shiver of fear.
C’mon, he told himself. You’re a good enough pilot to handle this. Which was true, and yet it did nothing to calm his concern.
Instead it heightened.
Something’s wrong, he thought, the hair on his arms rising as his heartbeat quickened. It’s not supposed to be like this, not like this at all—
The shuttle controls didn’t make sense. What was he supposed to be doing? It felt as though the instrument panel changed every time he looked at it, while he was looking at it, and that only made everything scarier.
Then another voice inside his head, the one that spoke to him as Master Loden once had, said, Get away from this place.
Acting on instinct, Bell managed to push the controls enough to steer the shuttle away from Starlight Beacon. Within another hundred meters, the fear had begun to subside. He took deep breaths as he felt the terror growing more distant.
Somehow…fear itself had been placed aboard Starlight. And Bell had no doubt, it was this same fear that had killed Orla Jareni, Regald Coll, and Loden Greatstorm.
But what is it? How does it do this?
Those were questions that required investigation, and soon. At the moment, however, Bell was certain of only one thing: He must not return to Starlight. Whatever in there was poison to the Jedi, and if he went back in, he would only fall prey, too.
Instead he would have to find a way to help from out here.
“What was that?” Affie Hollow asked.
Pikka Adren—who was currently working side by side with Affie on the escape pods—leaned to look down the corridor, then shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”
“There was a shadow,” Affie insisted, “and I thought I heard something heavy moving along.”
“Maybe it’s a Trodatome or something that got lost.” Pikka was already at work. “Not that I’ve seen one on board, and lucky for them, since I’m not sure one would fit into an escape pod. They’re kind of squidgy, though, so maybe one could smush in?”
Affie still felt uneasy, because she knew something was creeping around this station killing or hurting Jedi. Anything unknown could prove to be a threat.
Then again, the Jedi had described a sense of fear and confusion that surrounded them when the something approached, and Affie wasn’t getting that at all. Even her understandable worries about getting off the station in time could be managed as long as she had a job to focus on, as she did at the moment. I guess it was nothing, she decided.
Pikka nodded and smacked the panel nearest the first escape pod they’d readied. “I think she’s ready for her first launch.”
Affie grinned. “Then let’s do it.”
Stellan Gios had chosen the first to board: a Caphex husband and wife who had wished to take part in the cargo bay escape but had been among those for whom there was no more room. With Affie’s help, they both managed to climb inside the tiny pod; they fit, but barely.
“All right,” Affie said, “Strap in, seal off, and we’ll launch the minute we get the clear.”
As the pod sealed, Affie and Pikka each looked at the control panel, which should’ve shown an all-clear to launch. Instead it blinked red. “What now?” Pikka wailed. “Is it just malfunctioning?”
“We can’t launch them without knowing,” Affie insisted. “We don’t know what damage the exterior of the station took when it broke in two. There could be a dangling beam or something out there.” Already Pikka was nodding; she saw it also. If they launched an escape pod only to have it almost instantly collide with metal, they would be costing lives instead of saving them.
A small knock came from within the pod. No doubt the Caphex were wondering when they would finally escape. Affie wished she had an answer.
At that moment, her comlink hissed, and then she heard a voice: “This is Jedi apprentice Bell Zettifar, calling anyone who can hear me aboard Starlight Beacon. Do you read me?”
“Reading you, Bell,” said Affie. “I’m Affie Hollow—not a Jedi, but I’m working on the escape pods here. Do you want me to find Stellan Gios?”
“Maybe—but is there any way I can help you? I’m in a shuttle circling Starlight right now. Docking seems…” He hesitated a second before continuing, “…inadvisable, but if there’s anything I can—”
“There is, and wow, do you have great timing.” Maybe there was something to this Force thing after all, Affie reckoned.
Nan had never fought against other Nihil before. She’d wanted to, at times—but she’d kept her eyes on her goal. Murdering other Nihil was only advisable when it meant a move upward, when it got her closer to wealth, to power, to Marchion Ro. And it was foolish to work against any of Ro’s plans.
Today was different.
She shouted from sheer exertion as she swung the metal pipe at Leyel, who blocked it with her own; the dull clang of metal on metal resonated with the answering pain in the bones of her arm. Nan kept swinging, kept hitting, driving Leyel farther back toward the wall.
If only Chancey Yarrow would kill them already! Yeah, yeah, a fusion laser wasn’t nearly as accurate as a blaster, and misdirected fire could be fatal, but so would be crashing onto Eiram’s surface. In Nan’s opinion, it was time to take the risk already.
Instead Chancey and Cale were locked in a battle of attrition, hurling projectiles at each other, each trying to wrangle for position closer to the control panels for the station’s thrusters.
(Neither Nan nor anyone else in the fight paid any further attention to the wounded Werrera, who now lay utterly still on the floor, dead or dying. Nobody would check to see which.)
Leyel swung lower than Nan was expecting, catching her in the gut and knocking the breath from her lungs. Nan went sprawling sideways, skidding across the floor as Leyel shouted, “Traitor! You’re nothing but a traitor!”
I don’t want to die for the Nihil, Nan decided. Instead I will live for them.
Already Leyel was running toward her, aiming a killing blow for Nan’s brain. Nan rolled over and flung herself toward Chancey—specifically, toward her fusion laser. Her hand made contact with the grip, and even as Chancey tried to react, Nan shoved her sideways so she could yank the fusion laser up—even with Leyel’s face—which was when she fired.
Leyel dropped. Before Cale could react, Nan wheeled around and fired at him, too. He staggered back two steps before falling not far from his comrade. They’d both been killed instantly. For a few moments, Nan and Chancey just stood there, breathing hard, staring at the carnage.
“I know what would’ve happened if I’d missed,” Nan said. “But I didn’t miss.”
“We’re going to have a conversation about this later.” Chancey had begun rolling up her sleeves. “Right after I finish saving everyone’s ass.”