“…although it has descended into our atmosphere, it’s not too late to shoot Starlight out of the sky.”
Eiram’s defense minister, an Enso woman swaddled in a thick coat, nodded approvingly at her adviser before turning to the two queens of her planet. “Queen Dima, Queen Thandeka, you’ve heard the report. You can see it with your own eyes. How much longer can we continue to endanger our people?”
“We ask our people to accept a risk,” Queen Dima replied. She was somewhat older than her consort, with thick gray hair twined in complicated braids upon her head. “To do otherwise means submitting all those on Starlight Beacon to certain slaughter.”
The defense minister bowed her head. “With respect, Your Majesty—our first responsibility is to the people of Eiram.”
Queen Dima glanced at her consort. Though Dima’s rule was absolute, she listened carefully to her advisers—above all to her wife of thirty years. As the queen regnant had aged and become more frail, Thandeka as queen consort had taken on more responsibility, in particular when it came to dealing with dignitaries from other nations and, now, the Republic.
It was Queen Thandeka who had argued most strongly to give the Jedi time, and Dima had trusted her. At this point, however, doubts were creeping into Dima’s mind—doubts Thandeka was beginning to share.
As much as Thandeka trusted the Republic, as greatly as she honored the Jedi, she knew their gifts had limits.
“How long until impact?” Thandeka asked.
The defense minister replied, “Approximately forty-five minutes—but we only have another ten to fifteen minutes to shoot them down. After that, we’ll simply be scattering the debris over a wider field.”
Queen Thandeka’s shoulders slumped. She thought of the faces of the Jedi she had come to know over the past weeks. How many of them were lost already? How many were about to fall?
Then Queen Dima startled her by saying, “We cannot do this.”
“But—” The defense minister’s face fell. “Your Majesty, how can we not?”
“It is as I said before.” Dima rose to her feet, looking each adviser in the eyes in turn. “We will not use the kind euphemism preventive action to justify killing. Did anyone on this planet not know of the Nihil before? Had anyone failed to learn that Starlight Beacon was one of their targets? Yet we invited Starlight here when we needed assistance—when it suited us. Our planet accepted those risks when we accepted the Republic’s help…and we will not allow the Nihil to turn us into murderers.”
Queen Dima looked at Thandeka last, and Thandeka didn’t try to hide her tears. It was hard to see their people in danger, but it would have been far worse to lose the very soul of their world, all in the name of “safety.”
The decision was made. After this, only the Jedi could determine what would happen next.
The path downward had been cleared, and so Elzar at last began his descent to the bottom of Starlight Beacon.
The tiny maintenance pod made its way slowly—only about a human’s walking speed, if that—because Elzar couldn’t be sure what jagged metal might be waiting below. It wouldn’t take much of a bump to damage the hull; his pod was such a flimsy thing that it only barely protected him from the radiation he’d pass through. Once Elzar made it to the lowest level, he’d close up the floor above, which ought to shield him long enough to repair the station’s positional thrusters.
But descending slowly meant having plenty of time to see everything he passed, and what he saw horrified him.
One level: fire-scarred, black on gray on black, with a few crumpled figures among the debris that had previously been the bodies of sentients.
The next level: what had been the beautiful arboretum, now dark and weighed down with soot so that the few standing furnishings and wall panels all sagged nearly to the point of collapse.
The level after that: almost empty, where before it had been bustling with energy and action. Somehow that was even worse—the simple absence of purpose where there had been so much before.
Seeing the damage to the station on every floor stoked Elzar’s temper until it grew hotter and hotter, threatening to get the better of him. The Nihil did this. They couldn’t let one pure, good, noble thing stand. They couldn’t endure a symbol of cooperation, friendship, and peace. So they made it ugly, and they cost people lives, and they always—
Elzar caught himself. This wasn’t the time. He had a job to focus on.
The pod went yet deeper, into sections where not even emergency lighting still ran. Only the faint glow from the pod controls illuminated Elzar’s face. It was almost unnerving.
“C’mon,” he muttered to himself, trying to ignore the chill he felt. “Aren’t you a little old to be scared of the dark?”
But Elzar couldn’t shake the deep sense that something was terribly wrong.
Were there more Nihil saboteurs lurking? Was some kind of internal collapse of the station imminent? Fear rose higher and higher within Elzar, like floodwaters up to his neck, quickening his breathing until he could scarcely focus.
The pod’s controls didn’t seem to make any sense anymore. Why was he in this pod? Where was everyone else, and—
—what was that?
A large shape, indistinct in the gloom of a poorly lit level, swam and morphed in Elzar’s vision like a fever dream. He only knew that it was hideous, repellent, wrong. It was moving toward him—whatever it was—and everything in him recoiled. He slumped against the pod wall and lifted his arm to try to shield his eyes, but his arm was so heavy…
The pod descended another level; the shape disappeared. What happened? Elzar couldn’t understand it. Where am I? What’s going on?
Another level. His heartbeat still pounded against his rib cage so hard it seemed to hurt, and Elzar felt as though he’d like to claw his way out of this pod…but he remembered the pod, and his mission, and how to work the controls.
He also remembered what had just happened, and how strange it was. Elzar had been briefly—but totally—incapacitated by fear and confusion upon his nearness to something. The farther he got from it, the better he felt.
Although he racked his brain for any meaningful memory of it, he retained merely a few indistinct flickers of a large creature moving toward him. He knew only two things for certain:
1. This was the creature, or one of the creatures, that had been attacking the Jedi aboard Starlight Beacon—attacking them through the Force; and
2. If Elzar’s pod had moved any slower, he’d probably already be dead.
Unbeknownst to Elzar, his encounter with the creature—his confusion, his fear, his mortal dread—had been sensed by another.
Stellan stood in the quartermaster’s office, struggling to catch his breath. The link between Elzar and himself was exceptionally strong at present, no doubt due to the deep meditative bond Elzar had shared with Stellan to center him after his last encounter with these terrible, nameless creatures on board. He knew that Elzar had been at risk, but had escaped.
For the moment.
Too much depended on the next several minutes, Stellan realized. And he would not leave his friend to suffer as Stellan himself had suffered, alone.
“Forfive?” he said. “Prep a second maintenance pod.”
The droid rolled toward him inquisitively. “Is there another area in need of imminent repair?”
“No. But Elzar needs backup.” Stellan squared his shoulders. “I intend to be with him.”
It had been a while since Bell had flown in-atmosphere, but it was coming back to him fast.
The sky over Starlight Beacon was no longer black but dark blue, a blue that brightened by the minute. So far the atmospheric drag on his shuttle was minimal, but it would only increase from here.
Luckily, Bell only had to get within a reasonable range of Starlight to do his job.
“Escape pod A is clear,” he reported, hovering slightly above it. “Repeat, the pod is clear!”
Seconds later, the escape pod launched—the first one to get away from Starlight Beacon. Bell cheered, then winced; it didn’t pay to be too loud while wearing a flight helmet.
But he couldn’t help grinning. After so much grief and loss and fear, finally, finally things were going right.
Over the comm came the voice of Affie Hollow: “Okay, pod B is loaded and ready for go. Can you confirm it is clear?”
A small orange light around pod B was blinking; no debris stood in its way. Bell said, “Confirmed clear. Let’s get them out of here!”
This pod, too, shot forward, launching in a long, graceful arc down toward Eiram’s surface.
Burryaga could’ve gotten out of the bay, found a pod, found a way to juice it up, Bell thought. Anything was possible.
He set those hopes aside to focus on the present moment. Currently it was easy to confirm the pods clear, but after the next few, they’d get to an area of the station that showed more damage. Not all those pods could be safely sent away, and it would be Bell’s job to let them know which they were.
No matter how many lives had already been lost, every one they saved would be a victory.
Affie had been hesitating about her choice to remain with the Vessel before—but never so much as she did the moment Pikka Adren put her hands on Affie’s shoulders and said, “A ship is not a life.”
“I know that,” Affie managed to reply. “Still, it’s mine—both my ship and my life.”
“Of course it is. The decision is yours.” Pikka shared a look with her husband, Joss, who was already lowering himself into the escape pod, before turning back to Affie. “I just want you to understand that it’s always possible to start over. Believe it or not, before Joss and I were together, I worked on the crew of a small ship that I was so dedicated to I—I made sacrifices I shouldn’t have made—” Pikka closed her eyes tightly, as if willing back the memories. “Long story. Slightly off topic. The point is, things are always replaceable. People aren’t. That includes you.”
“It also includes my crew,” Affie said. Geode was no closer to fitting through the door of an escape pod than he’d ever been. “What kind of captain abandons her people?”
“Talk it over with your people, then. Ask them what they think.”
Affie said nothing, because she already knew that if she asked Leox and Geode, they’d shove her into an escape pod so fast her head would still be spinning at landfall. She didn’t want to leave them, and she didn’t want to abandon the Vessel, and damnit, they still had upward of forty minutes! Escape pods could launch a lot later than that.
(Well. Not a lot later. But later.)
Either Pikka assumed Affie was going to take her suggestion, or she simply knew there was no time to argue further. She embraced Affie, who hugged her back, suddenly and sharply aware that she’d made a new friend, one she might not see again.
“Land safe,” Affie whispered. “Meet you on the ground.”
Elzar’s pod finally came to rest on very nearly the bottom level of Starlight—the same level that housed the workings for the positional thrusters. Finally, a chance to undo some of the Nihil’s damage, and to save every being still alive to be saved.
He worked with a methodical caution that would’ve startled Stellan. It might even have surprised Avar. Elzar was admittedly impressed with himself: going through checklists, sealing the three floors above to prevent any significant radiation leaks, double-inspecting his tools to make sure he had every single thing he might possibly need for the work to be done.
In moments such as this one—when Elzar could see himself as the Jedi he’d always truly hoped to be—it was easier to feel courage. To feel confident of a good result ahead.
My polestar, Elzar thought, and my song. They’re with me now, whether they know it or not.
Elzar unsealed the pod door and stepped out. Although he felt reasonably certain that none of those…things he’d seen above were on this level, it was best to make absolutely sure. Their influence was too powerful; it appeared no Jedi could stop them. Maybe, he thought, I should’ve sent a non-Force-user technician down here instead.
He halted where he stood when he heard something. After only a second, he relaxed slightly—those were sentient voices, surely—but nobody had answered any of their previous attempts at communication, suggesting that either this level had been empty at the time of the explosion or everyone down here had died.
So who was here?
More important—what were they doing to the thruster controls?
Leox Gyasi liked the Jedi as much as the next guy, more if the next guy happened to be a Nihil, but the only beings in the galaxy he liked enough to trust with his life were Geode and Affie Hollow. This meant he was about done waiting for the Jedi to fix this situation. If they could’ve done it, they would’ve by now.
Time for a new plan—and that plan had to involve saving the Vessel.
Leox understood what the ship symbolized to Affie, maybe more than she did herself. The Vessel had become hers after she’d turned her cartel-running mother in for countless egregious violations of the laws protecting indentured pilots. That made the ship the one thing Affie had gained for all that she’d lost, the one bit of tangible proof that she hadn’t torpedoed her whole life by doing the right thing.
In the end, he knew, to save their lives, Affie would give the Vessel up—but he was about as likely to let her do that as he was to let her cut off her own arm. Had to be another way.
Thinking fast, Leox headed to the cockpit to check a few readings. Geode stood there, utterly still, utterly blank. Leox stopped and gave him a withering look. “Come on, man, pull yourself together! I know it’s scary as hell, but this is when we need our wits about us the most.”
He grabbed some gear from a locker, shrugging a pack onto his back, strapping on goggles, and pulling out a device he’d had for quite some time. Had won it in a game of sabacc, actually, a long time before. At several points, Leox had considered selling it—the things weren’t cheap—but he’d always wondered whether it might come in handy. Today it would.
Affie appeared in the cockpit doorway, slightly out of breath. “Okay, the first ring of the escape pods is away.”
“Good work, Little Bit,” Leox said. “We’re about to be off ourselves. The only way left to open the launch bay doors is by using the manual controls.”
“But—” Affie frowned. “Those are located on the exterior hull. Outside the station.”
“Indeed they are.” Leox stood upright, displaying the item from his locker to his crewmates for the very first time. Geode was again silent from shock, though of a very different sort than before. Affie’s jaw literally dropped.
“Leox…is that—do you—” She stammered. “Are you holding a thermal detonator?”
He nodded. “Been saving it for a special occasion. Looks like that’s today.”