فصل 16

Chapter Sixteen

Solar Array 22-X. 10 minutes to impact.

The station heaved, throwing Captain Bright off his feet and into a wall. He hit hard, barely catching himself on a stanchion before an impact that would surely have cracked his skull.

The pill droid floating just a few meters ahead of him in the burning corridor didn’t seem to notice the jolt at all—but then it wasn’t in contact with the deck. It was floating, serene as ever, its stretcher attachment unfolded from its carapace, currently occupied by an unconscious, tiny Anzellan, purple drops of blood leaving a trail behind the droid.

They weren’t far from the Aurora IX, and the Anzellan made seven rescued crewmembers from the solar array—the full complement. The job was done, and so far, they’d all survived, miracle of miracles. It was just a matter of whether they could get far enough away from the station before it blew. Which was imminent, as the series of increasingly urgent messages he’d received from the engineering deck suggested.

Bright lifted his comlink.

“Petty Officer Innamin,” he growled. “What in blazes was that? I thought you told me you could keep this station stabilized?” “What I told you, Captain, is that I explicitly could not do that,” Innamin replied, his voice wavering between annoyance and utter panic. “The reactor will blow. There is nothing I can do about it. We just need to be gone when it does.”

“All right,” Bright said. “I have the last crewmember. We’ll be at the Longbeam in about thirty seconds. Get up here, and we’ll decouple and get gone.”

The pill droid had reached the air lock, where Ensign Peeples was waiting; he had been tasked with stabilizing the other injured crewmembers of the solar array in the Aurora IX’s medical bay. His needlelike snout buzzed as he saw the Anzellan.

“Aww,” he cooed. “Who’s the cute little baby?”

Peeples picked up the injured crewmember and cuddled him against his chest. The pill droid’s stretcher attachment snapped together and refolded itself in some ingenious way before disappearing back inside its carapace.

“Blast it, Peeples, that’s not a baby. Get him to the medical bay, and make sure everyone’s strapped in and ready to go. We need to fly, and it might get rough.”

Peeples blinked his eyes, all nineteen of them, and Bright’s tentacles told him the ensign was frustrated, presumably at his fun being ruined. But he turned, taking the Anzellan with him.

Then he turned back.

“By the by, an order came through, from the Third Horizon,” Peeples said. “Full system evac. All rescue efforts are supposed to end, and all vessels are to head to hyperspace access zones and leave Hetzal immediately.”

“They say why? Lotta people gonna get left behind.”

Peeples shrugged, or performed the odd spasm that passed for a shrug with him, and walked away, crooning to the unconscious little being in his arms.

Another rumble from the station, and a blast of flame rushed down the corridor. Bright barely registered what was happening before the pill droid moved with a speed belying its usual languid grace. It inserted itself between the inferno and Bright. One of its side panels opened, and a nozzle emerged. Suppressor foam shot from it, intersecting with the flames, knocking them down, and only the merest wash of heat reached Bright.

He released the breath he’d been holding, then drew in another, realizing how close he’d just come to being cooked alive. He patted the top of the pill droid’s cylinder.

“Thanks, pal,” he said.

The pill droid emitted two short beeps. Bright couldn’t understand Binary without a translator, but he took the sound to convey a sort of “just doing my job, sir” type of stoicism, which he liked.

He lifted his comlink again. “Innamin! Where the hell are you? If you don’t get up here I’ll leave you behind!”

“About that,” came the reply. No longer annoyed, no longer panicked. Just…resigned.

That, Bright did not like. “What’s the problem, Petty Officer?” “I can’t leave. I have to run a sequence on the reactor’s control console, injecting coolant every few seconds, and if I stop, it’ll blow right away. I was trying to set up some sort of automation, but the processors are damaged. I…” His voice cracked.

“No, we’ll get you out,” Bright said. “I’ll bring the pill droid. We can show it the sequence. It’ll run it for us while we get out and away.” “Captain…you should go. Coming down to save me will take time, and—”

“Shut up, Innamin,” Bright said.

He gestured at the pill droid’s ocular sensor, giving it the command to follow, and then he started sprinting toward the nearest set of deck ladders.

He made his way down the decks as quickly as he could, finally arriving at the reactor level. Innamin looked up, his face covered with sweat, so relieved he looked like he was going to faint.

“Hold it together,” Bright said to the junior officer.

The station shook again, and didn’t stop.

“We have no time,” Innamin said.

“Clearly,” Bright said. “Show the droid the sequence.”

“It has to happen when this gauge goes into the red,” Innamin said, a scenario conveniently happening at exactly that moment. He tapped a quick run of five button-presses on the console, and the gauge slipped back a few notches. Not to green, but to orange, and that would have to do.

The sequence was not complicated. Bright got the order just from seeing it once. Evidently the droid had it memorized, too. It moved forward, taking Innamin’s place at the console, waiting for the next opportunity to enter the commands.

“Go, right now,” Bright told his subordinate. “Get to the

Longbeam.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I want to make sure the droid can do this,” he said. “Just go. Help Peeples. The light only knows what he’s doing up there.”

“Thank you, Captain, it…it means a lot.”

“We’re all the Republic,” Bright said.

Innamin nodded and ran off, out of the reactor chamber, toward the nearest deck ladder.

“All right, you beautiful machine,” Bright said, turning back to the pill droid. “Show me you understood.”

The gauge slipped into the red, and the pill droid moved fast and sure, tapping the five buttons. The gauge fell back—less than it had the previous time, Bright noticed—and the station seemed just a bit less likely to shake itself apart.

“Okay, it’s all yours,” Bright said. “I gotta run. It’s been wonderful working with you.”

This time the droid did not respond, which Bright decided to take as a sort of resigned agreement. He turned and raced out of the room, following the path Innamin had taken. He reached the ladder and put his boot on the first rung.

This will work, he thought, more wish than belief.

And then he sensed it—or rather, his tentacles did, with their ability to pull out pheromones from even the most polluted environment.

There was another being here, someone alive. Alive and hurt, if his receptors didn’t steer him wrong.

Bright followed the scent trail, and there, behind a panel, was a Twi’lek, male, heavy, bruised, bleeding, and unconscious. He was dressed in the uniform of the station, and Bright didn’t know if Innamin hadn’t thoroughly searched this deck because he was distracted by the damaged reactor, or because the injured man was mostly hidden, or…well, it didn’t matter, did it?

Just to see, Bright crouched down and attempted to lift the Twi’lek.

His muscles strained, but the unconscious man was deadweight. He barely moved.

No, he thought. No way.

Bright gave himself a moment, just one, to think about his life, the things he’d done and the things he thought he might do. He thought about the Republic, and what it meant, and his own oaths to serve it and all its people.

And then he ran back to the reactor.

“I’ve got this,” he said, pushing the pill droid out of the way and taking its position at the control console. He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder.

“You’ve got a patient, about nine meters past the deck ladder. Get him back to the ship. Now.”

The droid rotated, swooshing quickly away.

Bright tapped in the command sequence, and the gauge slipped back a little—but less than it had the last time.

He spoke into his comlink.

“Innamin,” he said. “You make it?”

“Yes, Captain,” came the reply. “But where are you? You were supposed to be right behind me.”

“Change in plans,” Bright said. “I’m sending the pill droid up with one more evacuee.”

“But we already got all seven crewmembers.”

“Guess there were eight,” Bright said.

“But the reactor,” Innamin said, trailing off. Bright could almost hear the kid’s mind working, coming to understand the reality of what was about to happen.

“Take off the minute you have the droid aboard. Don’t wait. Get out of the system’s gravity wells and jump away. Rendezvous with the Third Horizon, if you can. If not, get back to Coruscant. It seems like things are falling apart all over the system, not just here.” “But Captain, maybe—”

“No. Look. I’ve been easy on you as long as we’ve flown together, Innamin. The insubordination, the joking around…life’s too short, and the ship’s too small, I always figured. But all that ends now. Life is short, Petty Officer, pretty damn short indeed. I gave you an order, and if you do not follow it, I will see you court-martialed.” A long silence from the comm. They both knew how empty that threat was. Not the point. At last, Innamin spoke, his voice subdued.

“I can see the droid. It has the crewman. A Twi’lek?”

“That’s right.”

Bright entered the sequence again. The gauge slipped back. A little less.

The tremors on the station had risen to the level of a seismic event.

The array was tearing itself apart.

“Go, Innamin!”

“We’ve…already undocked, Captain. Reversing thrusters now.

Getting to minimum safe distance. Shouldn’t be long.”

“Good,” Bright said.

The gauge was in the red again. Bright entered the sequence. This time, the needle didn’t move. It just stayed in the red.

Bright sighed.

“Captain, we are away,” Innamin said. “We are all the Republic.” “Damn right,” Bright said. “We are all the—”

Heat and light and nothing more.