فصل 8

Chapter Eight

Aguirre City, Hetzal Prime. 65 minutes to impact.

The Force sang to Jedi Master Avar Kriss, a choir that was the entirety of the Hetzal system, life and death in constant, contrapuntal motion. It was a song she knew well—she heard it all the time, everywhere she went. Here, the melody of the Force was off, a discordant jangle of death and fear and confusion. People were dying, or felt the dread of their imminent demise.

Threaded through that song—the Jedi, and the brave personnel of the Republic, and the heroic citizens of Hetzal itself, using the resources they had to try to save the people of these worlds.

The Third Horizon had landed not far from the Ministerial

Residence in Aguirre City, the capital of Hetzal Prime. The Republic was coordinating its efforts with the Hetzalian government to try to stem the tide of the disaster—ensuring the evacuation proceeded in as orderly a fashion as possible, tracking the incoming projectiles, helping as they could.

Avar Kriss was still on the ship’s bridge, still serving as the point of connection for the Jedi in the system, letting them sense one another’s presence and location and emotional states. Sometimes words or images came through unbidden, but only rarely. It was all just a song, and Avar sang and was sung to.

Still, she was able to gather a great deal of information from what it told her. She knew that fifty-three Jedi Vectors were currently active in the Hetzal system. She knew which Jedi were working on the planet— for example, at that moment, Bell Zettifar, Loden Greatstorm’s promising Padawan, was approaching the surface of Hetzal Prime at extraordinary speed.

Elzar Mann, her oldest, closest friend in the Order, was in a Vector of his own, flying a single-person version of the ship near one of the system’s three suns. He was almost always alone. Avar was one of only two Jedi he worked with regularly—it was just her and Stellan Gios.

This was mostly because Elzar was…unreliable wasn’t exactly the right word. He was a tinkerer, if that term could apply to Jedi techniques.

He never liked to use the Force the same way twice.

Elzar’s instincts were good, and he didn’t try anything too unusual when the stakes were high. Usually, his experiments in Force techniques did expand the Order’s understanding, and occasionally he accomplished incredible things.

But sometimes he failed, and sometimes he failed spectacularly.

Again, never when lives were on the line, but even that bit of uncertainty, coupled with Elzar Mann’s general unwillingness to take the time to explain whatever he was trying to do…well, some in the Order found him frustrating to deal with. Avar believed that might explain his continued status as a Jedi Knight rather than a Master. She knew that bothered Elzar. He thought it was unfair. He didn’t care about other Jedi’s paths through the Force—why should they concern themselves with his? He just wanted to follow his road where it led.

Avar didn’t understand Elzar’s explorations any more than most of the Jedi, but the key to their relationship was that she never asked him to explain. Anything, ever. That arrangement had powered their friendship since their days as younglings together in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. That, and she just liked him. He was funny, and clever, and they had come up together through the Order, Stellan and Elzar and her, the three of them inseparable through all their years of training.

She pulled her mind away from Elzar Mann, listening to the Force.

She sensed Jedi on the system’s worlds, Jedi in Vectors, and still more on stations or satellites or ships, all around the system, helping wherever they could, usually in conjunction with the twenty-eight Republic Longbeams deployed by the Third Horizon.

The chain of connection through the Force even told her that others of her Order were on their way, doing their best to respond to Minister Ecka’s original distress call despite being so far from Hetzal. Closest was Master Jora Malli, future commander of the Jedi quarter on the just completed Starlight Beacon, along with her second-in-command, the imposing Trandoshan Master Sskeer. Stellan Gios was powering in from his Temple outpost on Hynestia as if summoned by her thoughts of him a few moments before, whipping through hyperspace in a borrowed starship. And more besides.

Avar sent out a note of welcome, and called to every other Jedi she could reach, near Hetzal or not. Distance was nothing to the Force.

Who knew how they might help?

So far, the death toll from the disaster was low, barely above the baseline churn of life and death constantly at work in any large group of beings. She was worried that could change at any moment—they didn’t have a good understanding of what was happening here.

Nothing about it felt natural. She had never heard of anything like this —a huge spread of projectiles appearing in a system, popping out of hyperspace with no notice.

She could not imagine what would have happened here if the Third Horizon was not in transit nearby after a refueling stop, or if their inspection tour of the Starlight Beacon wasn’t interminably delayed by the project’s overseer, an officious Bith named Shai Tennem. She had insisted on showing her Jedi and Republic visitors every last obscure element of Starlight Beacon’s construction, pushing back their scheduled departure and irritating Admiral Kronara immensely. But if they had left on time, the Third Horizon would have been deep into hyperspace when Minister Ecka’s evacuation order went out, too far to get to Hetzal in any reasonable amount of time.

If not for an overzealous Bith administrator, Hetzal would be dealing with this apocalypse on its own.

The song of the Force.

Between what it told Avar directly and the chatter she heard around her from the Third Horizon’s deck officers, she was able to maintain an up-to-date picture of the disaster, in all its moments large and small.

Above Hetzal Prime, a Republic technician completed repairs to an evacuation ship that had lost power on its way offplanet, so it could continue on its way to safety.

Near the second-largest gas giant, two Vectors fired their weapons, and a fragment was incinerated.

A Longbeam pushed past its limits as it raced to reach a damaged station at the system’s outer edge. Its engines failed, catastrophically.

Avar gasped a little at the cold, dark sensation.

And above the Fruited Moon, one very clear impression, as close to a message as could be sent through the Force under these circumstances—a sense from a Jedi Knight named Te’Ami that their understanding of what was happening here was utterly, tragically incomplete.

“No,” Avar said, disturbed at the urgency of what Te’Ami was trying to pass along. Her emotions roiled, and the song of the Force shimmered in her mind, becoming quieter, less distinct.

Focus, she told herself. You are needed.

Avar Kriss calmed her emotions and listened. Now, thanks to

Te’Ami, she knew what to look for. She called the other Jedi’s face to her mind—green skin, high domed skull, large red eyes—and it took her almost no time to find what Te’Ami had tried to show her. In fact, now that she was looking, it was obvious. Avar spread her awareness through the system, pushing herself to the limit.

I can’t miss one, she thought. Not a single one.

She opened her eyes and unfolded her legs, setting her feet once again upon the Third Horizon’s deck. Bridge officers looked at her, surprised—she had not spoken or moved in some time.

Admiral Kronara was speaking to Chancellor Lina Soh, who had called in via a high-priority relay from Coruscant. Her delicate, sweeping features were displayed on one of the bridge’s commwalls.

She looked fragile—which she absolutely was not. Kronara, in contrast, had a face that looked like a hammer would break against it. He looked hard—which he absolutely was. He wore the uniform of the Republic Defense Coalition, light gray with blue accents, the cap tucked under his arm in respect for the chancellor’s office.

The resolution on the display was low, with sharp lines of static crossing Lina Soh’s face every few seconds—but that was to be expected. Coruscant was very far away.

“Thank the light your ship was close enough to Hetzal to respond, Admiral,” Chancellor Soh was saying. “We sent out aid ships as soon as we could, but even receiving the distress signal from Hetzal took time. You know how choppy the comm relays are from the Outer Rim.” “I do, Chancellor,” Kronara responded. “We appreciate anything you can do. We’re making progress here, but there will definitely be a large number of wounded, and I am sure a variety of essential systems will need repair. I’ll relay word to Minister Ecka that you’re sending assistance. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“Of course, Admiral. We are all the Republic.”

Avar walked across the deck, passing Kronara as he ended the transmission to Coruscant. He glanced over at her, curious, as she stopped before the display screen showing the status of the disaster mitigation effort—all the ships, people, Jedi, Republic, locals. Red, green, blue, worlds, lives, hope, despair.

She tapped certain of the red anomalies on the screen with her fingertip. As she did, they were highlighted, each surrounded with a white circle. When she was done, about ten of the projectiles were indicated.

Avar moved back from the display, then turned to look at the bridge crew. They were confused, but polite, waiting for her to explain what she had done.

“I hate to say this, my friends,” she said, “but this just got a lot harder. We have a new objective.”

Admiral Kronara’s weathered features twisted into a scowl. Avar did not take it personally.

“Does it replace the existing mission parameters?” he said.

“That would be nice,” she said. “But no. We still have to do everything we came here to do—keep the fragments from destroying Hetzal—but now there’s something else.”

She gestured at the display, with its highlighted red dots, racing sunward.

“The anomalies I have indicated here contain living beings. This is no longer just about saving the worlds of this system.”

Realization dawned on Kronara’s face. His scowl deepened.

“So it’s a rescue mission, on top of everything else.”

“That’s right, Admiral,” Avar said.

A chorus of dismayed voices rose up as the officers realized that all their progress thus far was just the preamble to a much greater effort.

“How is that possible?”

“How many people? Who are they?”

“Are they ships? Is this an invasion?”

Admiral Kronara held up a hand, and the voices stopped.

“Master Kriss, if you say some of these things have people aboard, then they do. But how do you propose we mount a rescue? These

objects are moving at incredible velocities. Our targeting systems can barely hit them as it is, and now we have to…dock with them?”

Avar nodded.

“I don’t know how we’ll do this. Not yet. I’m hoping one of you might have an idea. But I will say that every one of those lives is as important as any life on this world or any other. We must begin by believing it is possible to save everyone. If the will of the Force is otherwise, so be it, but I will not accept the idea of abandoning them without trying.”

She moved her hand in a broad circle, encompassing the entire display board.

“This is all you have to work with—what we brought with us. Every Hetzalian ship is occupied with the evacuation effort, so all we’ve got are the Vectors and the Jedi flying them, plus the Longbeams and their crews. Find a way. I know you can. I’ll send word to the Jedi. The Force might have an answer for us.”

The bridge officers looked at one another, then scrambled into motion with a new surge of activity, as they began to plan ten utterly impossible rescue missions.

Avar Kriss closed her eyes. She stepped up into the air. The Force sang to her, telling her of peril and bravery and sacrifice, of Jedi fulfilling their vows, acting as guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.

The song of the Force.