فصل 17

Chapter Seventeen

Hetzal Prime. The Third Horizon. 4 minutes to impact.

“Master Jedi, are you certain this is the correct choice?” Admiral Kronara asked.

Avar Kriss could sense his concern. He was a good commander, and although she was not technically part of his crew, she knew he felt responsible for her safety. Especially considering that if he did what she was asking him to do, he was probably condemning her to death.

“I am certain, Admiral,” she said. “We’ve loaded as many refugees as we can hold, and more besides.”

She glanced around the hangar. It was true. This room alone held hundreds of beings, with nothing other than the clothes on their backs.

No one had been allowed to bring anything else. Every bit of available space on the huge cruiser had been allocated toward saving lives. And even then, people were still trapped on the planet’s surface. Admiral Kronara and his crew had done their best, but the Third Horizon was just a machine, and there was a point where taking on additional mass would mean the ship could not take off, and no one would be saved at all.

“These people are afraid,” Avar said. “I can sense it. You need to get them to safety.”

“But if you fail, you will die,” Kronara said, making one last attempt.

“I know that, Admiral, but there are billions of people down there who couldn’t find a way off Hetzal Prime.” Here she pointed, at the open sky visible outside the hangar’s exit ramp.

The ship was a hundred meters up, stationary above the cropland outside Aguirre City, having left the starport after taking on as many refugees as it could.

“If I don’t try this,” Avar continued, “they will definitely die. Every last one.”

“But can you actually save them? I’ve never heard of anything like this being possible—even with the Jedi.”

Avar smiled at him.

“All things are possible through the Force,” she said. “Now take the Third Horizon and go. I have work to do, and it’s important that you deliver a direct report to Chancellor Soh about what you witnessed here. It’s not enough to tell her over the comm. None of this should have happened. There’s something wrong. I can sense it. Hyperspace is…sick, for lack of a better word.”

“Of course, Master Jedi,” the admiral said. “But you should deliver that report yourself. I still don’t understand why you can’t perform your task from open space? I don’t know much about the Force, but I do know it works across great distances, and if you’re safe on the ship, at least you’ll have a way to escape if—”

Avar Kriss believed that the best way to win arguments was simply not to have them. She sprinted down the exit ramp and leapt, out into open air. The ship was hovering above a field of some blue grain she was not familiar with—all she knew was that it was absolutely gorgeous. She used the Force to slow herself, somersaulted, then landed lightly on plowed soil between two neat rows of the stuff.

The Third Horizon was already just a dwindling speck in the sky by the time she looked back up. Admiral Kronara had accepted defeat and was wasting no time leaving the system. That was good. They had very little.

Focus, she told herself. Time truly was short, and the task to be accomplished here was all but impossible.

A tank of supercooled liquid Tibanna, as large as a decent-sized starship by itself, was headed directly toward one of the Hetzal system’s three suns, an R-class star. When it hit, the volatile nature of the substance, combined with the intense heat of the star and its unique nitrogen-heavy composition, would cause a rapid chain reaction that would result in the sun surging outward, flaring up to nearly double its size, putting out radiation that would cook the entire system in a matter of moments. The Hetzal system, in not much time at all, would cease to exist.

Unless the Force willed it otherwise, and used its instruments—the Jedi—to prevent it.

Kronara wouldn’t ever understand why it was so important for her to stay on the planet. He couldn’t touch the Force.

Avar needed to be on the surface of Hetzal Prime because the world was a planet of life. Now, the Force was everywhere, of course—even in the deepest, coldest reaches of space. She could always hear its song— but here, standing in this field, surrounded by growing things that had been tended with love and care by the farmers of this world, the song was loud. Loud and sweet.

Here, she did not have to spend any extra time or energy seeking a deep connection to the Force. It was all around her.

Avar Kriss lifted her comlink. She set it to broadcast-only, knowing that what she was about to say would bring questions from many of the other Jedi in the system, some of whom outranked her. Jora Malli was a member of the Jedi Council, and even if she was planning to step down in order to take up her post on the Starlight Beacon, she hadn’t left the Council yet. Technically, she could order Avar to stop what she was doing.

Not that she would do that—probably—but why take a chance?

She thought about Elzar Mann, who did things like this all the time.

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission was basically his entire credo.

He’ll love this, she thought, and spoke.

“My Jedi friends, this is Avar Kriss. I am on the surface of Hetzal Prime. You know I’ve been watching you all work so hard to save this system and its people. You’ve done incredibly well. But something else is about to happen, something terrible, and we all need to act together to stop it.

“One of the hyperspace anomalies is headed directly for the system’s largest sun—and it is a container of liquid Tibanna. I am told that when it hits, a rare chain reaction will result that will destroy everything in this system.

“It is up to us to move the container to a new path. We will ask the Force to come to our aid. It might not be possible, and anyone who stays runs the risk of dying if we fail. The Third Horizon is about to transit the system. Anyone who wants to leave can dock with it. My good wishes will go with you.”

Avar waited. Though she had silenced her comlink to replies, the song of the system told her that no Vectors had altered course toward the rapidly accelerating Third Horizon. They had all decided to stay.

The Jedi were with her.

“Let’s begin,” she said.

She lowered the comlink. This would not be done with words.

Avar sent the concepts through the link with her fellow Jedi. Each would receive it in their own way, a series of impressions that she hoped would resonate properly with each of them. A very simple plan, really:

There is a thing, moving very fast. It is very large, and very heavy. It needs to change direction. We will all find it together, and we will all apply the Force to it together in just the same spot in just the same way at just the same time, and we will move it so it does not hit the sun.

Simple…but enormously difficult. Space was large, and there were many Jedi, and coordinating their efforts so they did not fight against one another or cancel one another out or touch the Force at slightly different moments…well. That was the task. No use complaining about it.

Avar’s lightsaber lifted from its holster, gliding up into the air through the Force. It floated up until the hilt was before her face, the crosspieces level with her eyes. The lightsaber ignited with a snap and a hiss, a bright-green beam spearing straight up at the blue sky and illuminating the field of blue grain around her.

The weapon began to rotate, slowly, like the blade of a windmill. It made a sound as it moved through the air, a low, droning hum. Avar breathed—in, out—and the blade slowly sped up. The tone of its passage through the air changed, no longer a low drone but a higher pitch, a lovely round note. The lightsaber moved faster, its blade now too fast to see; a green circle of light with a shining metallic center.

It was beautiful, but Avar closed her eyes. She did not need to see.

She needed to hear. Her lightsaber was not just a weapon. Here, now… it was an instrument.

The note of the blade rose, becoming a clear ringing, the normal crackling hum and whine of a lightsaber in combat replaced by a pure, glassine tone.

Her awareness was the song of the saber, and she tuned the speed of its rotation until the note it produced was precisely in sync with— Yes, Avar Kriss thought. I hear it.

Her mind snapped outward, the sabersong chiming in harmony with the larger chorus of the Force, in a single instant becoming the entire system and everything within it, and more particularly every single Jedi, each connected to the Force in their own way.

What she heard as a song, Elzar Mann saw as a deep, endless, storm-tossed sea. The Wookiee Burryaga was a single leaf on a

gigantic tree with deep-dug roots and sky-high limbs. Douglas Sunvale saw the Force as a huge, interlocked set of gears, made of an endless variety of materials from crystal to bone. Bell Zettifar danced with fire.

Loden Greatstorm danced with wind.

This was not the simple network she had built earlier. This was deeper. All of the Jedi were the Force, and the Force was all of them.

And she, Avar Kriss, could touch them all, no matter how they saw the Force.

Now, though, she had to find their target. The module of Tibanna racing toward the sun. It was difficult now, with so many Jedi singing in her mind, a chorus to the Force symphony blasting at full volume.

So many people, so many beings, so much life. Every grain in the dimly sensed field around her piping like flutes.

Somewhere in all of that was the module of liquid Tibanna racing toward the sun to destroy them all. It did not sing a song of its own, but that was itself something to be sensed. A silence, a caesura, a fermata of precisely the correct duration and size.

There, she thought.

She had it, without a doubt. It was—gone. She’d lost it.

“Blast it!” she said out loud, and everything wavered and almost faded away.

She’d lost the anomaly, and now couldn’t find it again, not within the chaos of everything else moving within the system. It was like looking at a particular flower in a wind-tossed meadow, looking away, then looking back and trying to find the precise blossom again.

Time was fracturing away, shards of moments flying off into nothingness, never to return. She had to find it. She had to—she could not fail. It was her responsibility. No one else could…

No. What had she said?

We will find it together.

She had a system full of Jedi working alongside her. They each had their own connection to the Force—perhaps different from hers, but no less powerful.

Avar Kriss asked for help, and help came.

Estala Maru found it first. Avar could see the Force through her eyes—to Maru, the Tibanna bomb was a single light in a single window in a single small building of an endlessly spiraling nighttime city. But once Estala had it, it was only a matter of pointing the other Jedi to look in that direction as well, and then they all did.

But now the task did fall to Avar.

She drew her awareness back, gauging how close the bomb was to hitting the star—it would not be long. The heat of the sun was already causing steam to rise from the forward edge of the tank’s outer shell.

They had to act.

There is a thing, moving very fast. It is very large, and very heavy.

It needs to change direction.

We will apply the Force to it together in just the same spot in just the same way at just the same time.

Avar Kriss showed the Jedi what to do, and as one, the Jedi reached out to the Force. They did not hold themselves back. They acted with disciplined desperation, leaving nothing in reserve.

We will move it.

Not far from the Fruited Moon, Te’Ami lost consciousness, yellow ichor streaming from her mouth.

We will move it.

A group of five Vectors flying in tight formation lost control of their Drift, too much of their focus devoted to the effort to shift the Tibanna bomb. Two of the craft collided before control could be reestablished, and the three Jedi aboard those ships were lost.

We will move it.

Now, Avar thought.

Across the system, Jedi reached out to the Force. Some closed their eyes, some lifted their arms, some stood, some sat meditating on the ground while others hovered above it. Some were in starships, others on the surface. Many were alone, but others were with members of their Order, or were surrounded by small groups of people who could sense, somehow, the import of what was happening, even if they could not themselves touch the Force.

Dozens of Jedi, acting as one.

The galaxy thrummed. An invisible hand grasped the Tibanna bomb in a firm grip and threw it to one side. Gentle, but precise, like tossing an egg to someone you hoped would catch it without the thing shattering all over their hands.

Avar listened.

They had succeeded. They had moved the Tibanna.

But they had also failed.

The tank had not moved far enough. It would still hit the sun, and even now, she could sense the liquid heating inside the container, pressure building, preparing for an explosion that would presage the larger blast to come.

Again, she told the Jedi, those of whom could still hear and respond. Many had fallen unconscious at the strain of the first attempt, which meant the burden on those who remained was that much greater.

We have to try again.

Avar could sense the weariness in the song, of all her companions in her great Order, these heroes who had all stayed to save people they had never met and probably never would, people who would never know the choice or the sacrifice being made on their behalf. None of that mattered.

She felt her fellows toss aside their exhaustion, lift themselves up, renew their focus.

Not only that, but she sensed that other Jedi had brought their focus to bear as well—from Coruscant, from across the galaxy. Even Yoda, wherever he was with his little crew of younglings—his great, wise mind sang its own part of the chorus, heartbreakingly beautiful, a voice of pure light belying his physical appearance. Not this crude matter indeed.

Avar would not have believed such a thing was possible—but as she had told the admiral, through the Force, there wasn’t a blasted thing that couldn’t be done. Her great Order was with her, as she was with them, and the Force was with them all.

We will move it.

Another moment chosen, another great effort.

We will move it.

She felt the Jedi saying the words with her, each in their own way, through their own particular lens on the Force. No, not saying.

Chanting. Singing.

We will move it.

More Jedi falling—mostly just collapsing where they stood, or

spiraling off in their Vectors. Some managed to regain control, but others were lost forever. Rohmar Montgo. Lio Josse.

Jedi Knight Rah Barocci tottered and fell off the tower farm on the Rooted Moon where he had been helping a family whose daughter had suffered a seizure in the stress of the evacuation order. The daughter was calm, her crisis over, but Rah fell twenty stories and did not recover in time to save himself.

With every Jedi lost, the work became harder.

Elzar Mann, standing alone on a rocky promontory overlooking a pharm where the new miracle drug bacta was produced in extremely limited quantities, felt the strain, the inertia of the Tibanna bomb that did not want to be moved.

To Mann, the Force was a bottomless sea, never ending, in which all things swam. Brightly lit in its upper reaches, fading to darkness below, but all one great ocean. He reached out to it, letting himself race along its currents, going deeper than ever before, seeing and sensing things he had never before known. The sea never ended, and there was so much of it he hadn’t seen. Strength flooded through him, his exhaustion vanishing. He added that power to that of his fellows, giving them everything he could.

We will move it.

…

…

…

…

And it will not hit the sun.

The Tibanna entered the outer photosphere of the Hetzal system’s largest star. For a moment, a long moment, the song stopped. Avar Kriss heard nothing but silence.

The fragment burst out of the sun, only having touched its outermost layers, heated but intact, on a path that would take it harmlessly out of the system.

The song burst back into life.

Jedi Master Avar Kriss fell to her knees there in the field on Hetzal Prime. Her lightsaber hilt, now deactivated, hit the ground a moment later, embedding itself in the soft soil.

Avar let herself breathe. Two long breaths, then three. Then she raised her comlink.

“Thank you,” she said.

Neither Avar Kriss nor any of the other Jedi in Hetzal knew that the events of those moments had been broadcast across the Outer Rim.

The signal even found its way to the inner worlds of the Republic, though slightly delayed due to the limitations of the galactic communications network. The signal was sent by Keven Tarr, working from Minister Ecka’s office in Aguirre City, still doing his job despite having had the opportunity to leave on the Third Horizon.

The broadcast was originally just a feed sent to the chancellor’s office on Coruscant at its request, tight-band and secure, to allow Lina Soh and her aides to have the most up-to-date information on the disaster as it progressed to this final phase.

But Keven Tarr made a decision. If these were to be the last moments of Hetzal—his home and the home of billions of others—he did not want such a good place to die unacknowledged. He changed the settings on the feed, stripping out the security codes and sending it to every channel, every relay, every ear and eye it could find.

This, in its way, was a feat of technology just as impossible as what the Jedi were attempting.

In any case, the people of the Republic watched as the fate of Hetzal was decided. They stopped breathing as the Jedi came together to save these worlds, full of people they did not know. This small group of brave people risked their own lives to save others, and used their unique gifts to preserve, to help.

A gasp of dismay rose on a thousand worlds as the first attempt failed, and it was clear that the Jedi had not succeeded. Perhaps could not succeed. Some looked away, not wanting to see the flare of light as the star exploded, followed closely by the death of billions of sentient beings.

Others could not look away, and these people saw what happened next. The star did not explode. The people did not die.

Across the galaxy, cheers of relief and joy. Yes, scowls from those who lived in darkness, hoping for the Jedi to fail, to be crushed, to die —but they were few.

This was a Republic that valued and celebrated life and those who preserved it.

This was a victory.

For this day, at least, the light had prevailed.

It was over.