فصل 7

Chapter Seven

Hetzal System. Above The Fruited Moon. 70 minutes to impact.

Three Jedi Vectors and a Republic Longbeam whipped through space, slingshotting around the orange-and-green sphere that was the Fruited Moon of Hetzal, legendary throughout the galaxy for its bounty. Four billion people resided there, farming and growing and living their lives. All would be dead in less than thirty minutes if the four Jedi and two Republic officers could not destroy or somehow divert the object headed directly for the moon.

The anomaly was on the larger side, bigger than the Longbeam, and on a collision course with the moon’s primary landmass. Due to its velocity, a significant portion of the moon’s outer layer would be instantly vaporized on impact, surging into the atmosphere. Then would come the heat, the flames, scouring the surface clean of all life, plant and animal and sentient alike.

That’s assuming the whole blasted moon doesn’t just shatter when the anomaly hits, Te’Ami thought as she banked her ship smoothly, following a precise curve with the other two Vectors piloted by her Jedi colleagues, performing the maneuver as much through her connection to the Force as her hands on the control sticks.

Total destruction of the Fruited Moon wasn’t impossible. The amount of energy transferred upon the object’s impact would fall like a hammerblow on the little planetoid. Worlds seemed unbreakable when you were standing on them, but Te’Ami had seen things in her day…the galaxy didn’t care what you thought couldn’t be broken. It would break things just to show you it could.

The little fleet was moving at incredible velocity, headed directly for the anomaly. Master Kriss back on the Third Horizon had designated this as a high-priority mission, which Te’Ami understood. Four billion people—a high priority indeed.

She could feel Avar at the back of her mind—not in words, more of a sense of the woman’s presence. Master Kriss had a skill set rare among the Jedi: She could detect the natural bonds between Forceusers and strengthen them, use them as almost a sort of communications network. It was inexact, best for transmitting sensations, locations, but it was still a useful ability, particularly in a scenario when a hundred Jedi were all trying to save a system at once.

Not just useful, though. It was comforting. She was not alone. None of them were. Fail or succeed, the Jedi were in this together.

But we will not fail, Te’Ami thought. She reached out a long, green finger and flipped one of the finely wrought switches on her console.

Her comm toggled open.

“Republic Longbeam, it’s time. I need you to transfer your weapons systems to my control,” she said.

“Acknowledged,” came the reply from the Longbeam, spoken by its pilot, Joss Adren. His wife, Pikka, was in the copilot’s seat. Te’Ami didn’t know them personally—only that they weren’t part of the Third Horizon’s crew, and had volunteered their help immediately when the cruiser dropped into the system and the scale of the disaster became clear. Admiral Kronara assigned them a Longbeam—better to put another ship out there to help instead of leaving it sitting idle in its hangar. The little bit of non-task-oriented chatter on the way out to the Fruited Moon had suggested Joss and Pikka were contractors of some kind—workers on the Starlight Beacon hitching a ride back to the Core now that their job was done.

They seemed like good people. Te’Ami hoped they were skilled as well. This would not be easy.

An amber light flashed on Te’Ami’s display, then went steady.

“Weapons are under your control,” Joss said.

“Thank you,” she said, then flipped another few switches before quickly moving her hands back to the sticks. Vectors could be tricky craft—the fluid responsiveness of the controls meant they could accomplish incredible maneuvers, but only if significant focus could be maintained.

“All right, my friends,” she said. “Are we ready?”

The replies came in across the Jedi-only channel.

The low voice of Mikkel Sutmani rumbled from her speakers, immediately translated into Basic via the onboard systems. “Good to go,” he said. Mikkel. The steadiest Ithorian she had ever met. He never said much, but the job always got done.

“We’re ready as well,” said Nib Assek, the third and final Jedi Knight in their little squadron. Her Padawan, Burryaga Agaburry, didn’t say anything. No surprise there. He was a young Wookiee, and spoke only Shyriiwook, though he understood Basic. Nib spoke his language well—she had learned it specifically to take him on as her apprentice. It wasn’t easy for a human throat to re-create the warbling growls and whines that composed Wookiee speech, but she had made the effort. Te’Ami and Mikkel, though, could not understand a word Burryaga said.

Regardless, if Nib Assek said she and her Padawan were ready, they were.

“Reach out,” Te’Ami said. “We’ll do it together. As one.”

She stretched out her senses through the Force, seeking the deadly meteor—or whatever it was, the scans remained inconclusive—

hurtling through space toward them. There. She could feel it, distorting gravity along its path. She considered, thinking about where the object had been, where it was, where it would be.

More specifically, where it would be when the full power of the weapons systems on the Vectors and the Longbeam hit it all at once.

This shot could not be calculated using computers. It had to be done by feel, with the Force, by all the Jedi at once in a single moment.

“I have the target,” she said. “Are we good?”

No answer from the other Jedi, but she didn’t need one. She could feel their assent through the link Master Kriss maintained back on the surface of Hetzal Prime. It was faster than speaking, more effective.

“Let us become spears,” she said, speaking a ritual phrase from her own people, the Duros.

Not wanting to take her hands off her control sticks at such a crucial moment, Te’Ami spared a tendril of the Force and used it to lift her lightsaber from its holster on her belt. Its hilt was dark cerakote with a heavily tarnished copper crosspiece. The blade, when lit, shone blue. The thing was scratched and gouged with use, and had an unsightly blob of solder up near the business end where she’d welded one of the components back on when it fell off. If there was an uglier lightsaber in the Order, she hadn’t seen it.

But it turned on when she wanted it to, and the kyber crystal that powered it remained as pure and resonant as the day she found it on Ilum so long ago.

Could Te’Ami have refreshed the blade, if she wanted to?

Absolutely. Many Jedi changed their hilts regularly, whether due to adjustments to fighting techniques, technological innovations, or even, on occasion, just…style. Aesthetics. Fashion, you could call it.

Te’Ami had no interest in any of that. Her lightsaber, ugly as it was, served as a perfect reflection of the great truth of the Force: no matter what a person was on the outside…

…inside, everyone was made of light.

The lightsaber moved through the cramped cockpit. It placed itself against a metal plate on the Vector’s control panel with a soft, very satisfying click, staying in place via a tiny, localized force field. A low hum vibrated through the ship’s hull as its weapons systems activated.

A new set of displays and dials went live, glowing with the bright blue of her saber blade. Weapons on a Vector could only be operated with a lightsaber key, a way to ensure they were not used by non-Jedi, and that every time they were used, it was a well-considered action.

An additional advantage—the ship’s laser could be scaled up or down via a toggle on the control sticks. Not every shot had to kill. They could disable, warn…every option was available to them. In this case, though, the settings would be at maximum. They needed to disintegrate the hyperspace anomaly, turn it into vapor, and that would require all three Vectors at full power plus everything the Longbeam had. One huge blast.

It would work. It had to work. Four billion defenseless beings on the Fruited Moon hung in the balance.

Te’Ami reached out again, checking her colleagues’ readiness.

There was something…from the thread leading to Nib Assek’s ship.

Fear…almost…panic.

“Nib, I’m sensing—” she began, and the reply came before she could finish.

“I know, Te’Ami,” came Nib’s voice. Calm, but perhaps a bit embarrassed. “It’s Burryaga. He’s having a hard time locking down his emotions. I think it’s the stress of what we’re doing. All the lives at stake.”

“It’s all right, little one,” came Mikkel’s gravelly tones, translated across the comm. “You are but a Padawan, and we are asking a great deal of you. Te’Ami, can we free him from the burden of helping us calculate the shot?”

“Yes,” Te’Ami said. “There is no shame in this, Burry. Only an opportunity to learn.”

Te’Ami reached out with the Force, gently curving the connection away from Nib Assek’s Padawan. The Wookiee was silent. She could still feel the roil of emotions from him. Well, no shame, as she had said. Every Jedi found their own path, and some took longer than others.

“Let’s go,” Nib said, perhaps trying to make up for the delay caused by her student. “We’re running out of time.”

“Agreed,” Te’Ami said.

She moved her thumbs up on her control sticks, first rolling them along the toggle wheel to tell the weapons system to fire at full power.

Then she settled her hands on the triggers.

The object, speeding toward the moon. Where it had been. Where it was. Where it would be.

The other Jedi were ready. They would fire the moment she did, as would the linked systems in Joss and Pikka’s Longbeam, every blast heading to precisely the same location in space.

Four billion people. It was time. Te’Ami tightened her grip on the triggers.

A squeal from the comm system, loud and insistent. A scream, or a yell—forceful, almost panicked. It startled Te’Ami, and if she were not a Jedi Knight, she might have inadvertently fired her weapons. But she was indeed a Jedi Knight, and did not fire.

It took Te’Ami a moment to understand what she was hearing—not a scream, but words. In Shyriiwook. Burryaga, saying something she could not understand. Loud, insistent, desperate. His emotions strong again through the Force, that same mixture of fear edging on panic.

“Burryaga, I’m sorry, I don’t understand Shyriiwook. Are you all right? We’re running out of time. We have to fire.”

“No,” Nib Assek said, her voice sharp, insistent. In the background, the whines and growls of Burryaga’s voice, coming over her comm.

“We can’t attack.”

“What are you talking about?” Mikkel said. “We don’t have a choice.”

“Burryaga is explaining it to me. The emotions we were getting from him—they weren’t his. He was sensing them. He had to tune in a bit, overcome his own fear before he could understand.”

“Please, Nib, just tell us what he means,” Te’Ami said.

A long, whistling, mournful bit of Shyriiwook, and then a pause.

“The object,” Nib said. “The one we have to destroy, to save the moon. It’s not just an object. It’s debris, part of a ship.”

Te’Ami let her hands fall from the control sticks.

“It’s full of people,” Nib finished. “And they’re alive.”