فصل 13

Chapter Thirteen

Hetzal Prime. 30 minutes to impact.

The two Jedi, Bell Zettifar and Loden Greatstorm, apprentice and master, sprinted toward the marauders’ speeders. The blades of their lightsabers buzzed and snapped through the air as they ran. The weapons sounded like nothing else in the galaxy. To Bell, it was the sound of skill, and training, and focus, and the choice of last resort, and the art of the Jedi.

Lightsabers were designed to end conflicts. They were designed to injure no more than necessary, and in the horrible circumstance where death was the only possible outcome, they would kill quickly. No more damage would be done by a lightsaber than its wielder chose. There was no collateral damage with the lightsaber.

The hum of his blade made Bell think of all these things at once. He suspected the marauders they were rapidly nearing assigned an entirely different meaning to the sound. He thought it probably sounded like…consequences.

The marauders saw them coming—how could they not? Bell thought that was part of the point of a lightsaber, too. It was bright, it glowed, it was impossible to ignore. Between the sound and the light, an enemy was given warning, every possible chance to simply not fight, and wasn’t that always the best outcome?

These evil people did not seem to think so. Evil…that was the right word. Anyone who would fire into a crowd of helpless people in an effort to blast their way into a compound and steal a starship…that was evil in its purest definition.

About twenty of the marauders waited, spread evenly between their two speeders. Both vehicles had large cannons mounted on the rear deck, and they swung to point at the Jedi, a loud hum splitting the air as the huge weapons powered up.

“Why has the Force called us to fight today?” Loden said.

“For life and the light,” Bell replied.

The speeder’s cannons fired, sending out a dense stream of blaster bolts, an overwhelming, ratcheting, spearing chaos, the sound of death.

Bell was not expert yet at many of the Jedi arts. Loden was right to push him, to take every opportunity to train him, to solidify his skills.

He was a Padawan, and probably would be for some time to come. But the lightsaber…that had come naturally to him from the very start.

Loden and Bell deflected the blaster bolts, every last one. The shots were deadly, thick cores of high-powered energy racing at incredible speed—and all of that meant nothing to the Jedi’s lightsabers. Nothing to the Force. The majority of the bolts were deflected skyward, away from the crowd, but both Jedi sent a few carefully aimed bolts back toward the speeders. They didn’t need to coordinate—Bell took the speeder on the left, Loden on the right, each Jedi’s choice obvious to the other through the Force. The bolts twanged off their blades with a sizzle of power.

The deck cannons exploded, becoming twisted, smoking, melted wreckage. The marauders operating those guns died—Bell sensed it happen, even shrouded as he was in the focus he brought to protecting himself and those around him, and through the connection he felt to the other Jedi in the system through Master Kriss’s efforts on the Third Horizon.

The cannons were gone, but they were not the only weapons the marauders possessed. Small-arms fire shot out from the smoking speeders—rifles and scatterguns and blaster pistols. It didn’t matter.

Loden and Bell moved forward, inexorable, their blades flashing.

A splinter grenade shot out from a tube held by one of the marauders, directly at a knot of fleeing refugees. Loden Greatstorm reached out without breaking stride and the grenade took a right-angle turn, moving from the horizontal to the vertical, shooting straight up into the air, finally exploding harmlessly hundreds of meters above them. Shards of sharp metal that would have turned dozens into bloody meat fell instead on the cropland bordering the Ranoraki compound.

Bell sensed his Master’s great displeasure at the attackers’ choice, and almost, almost felt bad for them.

The two Jedi leapt into the air, somersaulting, swatting away more blaster bolts as they arced up. Say this for the marauders, these dark, selfish people—they were decent shots. Not that it would matter.

Bell landed on the speeder on the left, Loden on the speeder on the right, as if they’d discussed it. The marauders finally got smart, diving off their vehicles, scattering into the crowd—but not before the Jedi disarmed a few, with either well-placed lightsaber thrusts or by using the Force to yank their weapons away.

“Blast it,” Loden said as the remaining villains, about eight, vanished into the crowd. “Some of them are still armed. They might take hostages. We need to get after them, now.”

“I know, Master, but how do we—”

A snap, and suddenly Bell saw nothing but golden light—bright, blinding—filling his vision. His nostrils filled with the scent of overheated, ionized air. Heat and light and color—a lightsaber blade. A blaster bolt caromed harmlessly into the sky, a streak of light that until just a moment before was destined to drill a hole into Bell’s forehead.

Bell understood. His master had just saved his life.

He looked past Loden’s blade to see that the Ranoraki guards, still at their posts atop their still-sealed gates, had lifted their weapons and were firing directly at them.

“Fools,” Loden said.

“What are they doing?” Bell said, lifting his own blade and deflecting a blaster bolt. “I thought you had an understanding with them?”

“They must have misunderstood the understanding,” Loden growled. “They’re taking their chance. They think between them and the marauders, they can take us down.”

“This is insane,” Bell said. “With everything else going on, they want to fight?”

“They’re afraid. They’re trying to carve out a little control from an uncontrollable situation.”

From the crowd, more blasterfire as the remaining marauders saw their chance and fought their way toward the gates. It was turning into chaos, a full-on battle, as families of refugees fought back—clearly some had their own weapons, carried in case of emergency.

And still, every moment, the larger disaster loomed. The longer these people remained on the planet, the greater the chance they all died when a projectile impacted the surface. In fact, it seemed like something already had.

Far to the west, a huge, dark cloud was swelling up into the sky on a gigantic column, spreading out into a thick disk as it reached the upper atmosphere. Moans of terror rippled through the crowd of refugees.

Massive clouds of darkness on the horizon were rarely a good sign.

“This has to stop,” Loden said.

“I agree…” Bell said. “…but how?”

His master looked out at the fighting. Then he glanced at the sky, where the Nova still circled slowly high overhead. Or maybe he was looking for fiery trails spearing in from space, signifying doom falling on the planet, nothing a lightsaber could knock back no matter how good its wielder might be.

It turned out he was evaluating, deciding. Making a plan.

“Apprentice,” Loden said. “Protect me.”

Without waiting to see how his Padawan would interpret this order, Loden deactivated his lightsaber. Just in time, Bell deflected a bolt that would have blasted a hole right through his teacher’s chest.

Favor repaid, Master, he thought.

Loden closed his eyes, holding his hand up in front of him, palm out. He snapped his fingers out, spreading them like a star.

That was all Bell could see—he stepped in front of his master, his lightsaber in a guard position, snapping blaster bolts back toward the guards on the wall.

Nothing will get through, he thought. I will protect my master.

He felt a surge in the Force behind him, and eight figures shot up from the crowd, rising into the air. The remaining marauders. Most dropped their weapons, but some sent a few shots wildly into the air, hitting nothing, yelling in fury, their limbs flailing, before their blasters were yanked from their hands.

Bell was in awe. This was the power of the Jedi. This, someday, could be him. Would be him.

Even the Ranoraki guards stopped firing as all eyes watched the attackers rise into the air. Higher, higher, three meters, five, ten…and then they dropped. They fell, like rocks thrown off a cliff, screaming, for perhaps a second and a half. Then they hit, and the screams changed to moans of pain.

They weren’t dead. Bell would have sensed it. But these people would kill no one else. Not today, or perhaps ever.

Cheers erupted from the crowd, which both Jedi ignored. They did their work because it was right, and for no other reason.

“Thank you, Bell,” Loden said.

“You’re welcome, Master.”

Loden lifted his lightsaber hilt. He pointed it at the gates to the compound, still locked, still sealed. He locked eyes with the guard captain.

He ignited the saber, and as the core of fire and light flashed into existence, the gates blew inward with a mighty crack, the lock obliterated by the Force and Loden’s mastery. The heavy metal doors smashed against the inner walls of the compound so hard it seemed as if they might rip from their hinges.

“Now do you understand?” he shouted at the guards as refugees streamed into the compound, headed for the starship.

The guard captain watched the refugees for a long moment, then looked up at Loden. He dropped his rifle, as did the rest of the guards.

Loden lowered his lightsaber. He looked at Bell.

He smiled.

Then a moment of uncertainty, for both master and apprentice.

“Do you sense that?” Bell said. “From Master Kriss, on the Third Horizon.”

“Yes,” Loden replied. “Something is wrong.”