فصل 14

Chapter Fourteen

The Third Horizon. 25 minutes to impact.

Avar Kriss stood before the projection wall on the bridge of the Third Horizon, still displaying the Hetzal system. The crisis had evolved from a stage of reaction to one of management. No new fragments had appeared from hyperspace in some time, and many of the existing projectiles had been dealt with in one way or another.

She was still listening to the song of the Force, and she knew additional Jedi were beginning to arrive in the system, to use their skills to help.

As she watched the screen, she saw Jora Malli and Sskeer execute a complex maneuver alongside two Republic Longbeams, destroying a fragment moments before it could impact a transport carrying several thousand evacuees.

“That’s done,” Jora said over the bridge comm, entirely matter-offact.

“Thank you, Master Malli,” Admiral Kronara said, standing to Avar’s left. “I…wasn’t sure you’d get there in time.”

“Thank the Force, Admiral,” Jora said, “and your teams. It was a joint effort. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see what else Sskeer and I can do out here.”

Something is wrong, Avar thought. She knew this was true, down to her bones, but she couldn’t figure out what felt so off.

“Call coming in from Coruscant, Admiral,” called one of the bridge officers. “It’s Chancellor Soh, asking for a status update.” “Put her through, Lieutenant. I think she’ll be happy with the good news.”

Kronara turned to her, smiling. He wasn’t celebrating, exactly— people had died in this system, and they still didn’t know what had caused the disaster in the first place—but he clearly felt like he had done his job well, on little notice and with no planning. Skill and training and inspired improvisation had saved the day here: the perfect outcome for a military man.

“I should know better than to say this,” Admiral Kronara said, “but I believe the worst might be over.”

You should know better than to say that, Avar thought. The Force was still singing in her mind, and right in the middle of it, still, a huge, blank spot. A silence. Something she was missing.

The admiral stepped to a comm station to take the call from the chancellor. Avar did not take her eyes off the screen.

What am I missing? she asked herself. What?

Something caught her attention—one of the hyperspace anomalies, deep in the system, not far from the largest of Hetzal’s three suns.

Avar beckoned to the closest bridge officer, then pointed at the display.

“This,” she said, pointing at the anomaly near the sun. “What is this, Lieutenant?”

The officer looked where she indicated.

“One of the fragments, Master Kriss,” he replied. “It doesn’t have any living beings aboard, and fortunately we can more or less ignore it.”

“Ignore it? Why?”

He tapped a control on a datapad. A dotted line appeared on the display, showing the projectile’s path. It would follow a short arc through the inner system before vanishing deep into the sun.

“As you can see,” the lieutenant said, gesturing at the display, “it will just fall into the star and be vaporized. Fortunate, really—we don’t have any ships near it. It exited hyperspace deep in the system, and most of our resources are deployed elsewhere.”

Avar frowned.

“There’s something else. Something about it. The Force drew my attention to it, and we need to understand why. Do you know what it is? Specifically, I mean?”

The officer hesitated, squinting at the screen as if that might tell him something new.

“It’s too far away for our onboard sensors to get any additional information, ma’am,” the officer said. “I can check with the Hetzalian administrators, though. They might have some satellites closer that could provide more information.”

“Please,” Avar said. “And hurry.”

The officer nodded and moved away, headed for a communications console.

Admiral Kronara, back from his conversation with the chancellor, stepped up beside her. “What is it, Master Jedi?” he said.

“I don’t know yet, Admiral,” Avar replied. “Trust in the Force.” “Well, obviously,” Kronara said.

“How is the chancellor?”

“Relieved, I would say. This wasn’t a good day, but she knows it could have been much worse. Chancellor Soh asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t answer yet—about the source of the anomalies, whether it would happen again, things like that. She’s thinking longterm.” “That’s her job,” Avar said. “What do you think she’ll do?”

“If I had to guess, she’s worried this was some kind of attack. I know it’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible. Enemies don’t usually announce their intentions to hit you ahead of time.”

“They also don’t usually send engineless passenger compartments filled with people, Admiral. What are those supposed to be? Some sort of invasion force?”

“I’m not going to pretend I know, Master Kriss. It could be some bizarre tactic we don’t yet understand. The important thing is that we were here to help stop it, and—”

“Sir, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, and both admiral and Jedi turned to look at him. The officer was pale, and Avar could sense the man was on the verge of despair. Like he had just stepped off a cliff.

“You know we’ve been collating our own sensor data with the insystem resources being coordinated through the minister’s office in Aguirre City,” he said. “Their primary tech is a man named Keven Tarr —he’s been able to do some truly remarkable things, keeping their satellite networks running despite all the damage from the hyperspace incursions. It’s all very impressive, actually, and—”

“Lieutenant, please,” Admiral Kronara said. “What is it?”

The officer nodded and spoke again.

“Tarr diverted everything he has left to getting a scan of the anomaly Master Kriss indicated—the one the, ah, Force pointed out to her. Turns out it’s a container module of some kind, huge, and it must have been damaged somehow. It’s leaking. Just a little, but enough that Tarr’s network could run a spectrographic analysis. It’s…” The lieutenant took a breath.

“…it’s liquid Tibanna. The whole thing. And the star it’s headed for is an R-class.”

Admiral Kronara swore, which came as a mild shock to Avar.

“Bad, I take it?” she asked.

The admiral stared at the display for a long moment, his jaw clenched.

“Honestly?” he said.

He turned to look at her.

“Couldn’t be much worse.”