فصل 3

Chapter Three

Aguirre City, Hetzal Prime. 2 hours to impact.

“Is this real?” Minister Ecka asked as the chimes rang through his office—consistent, insistent, impossible to ignore. Which, he supposed, was the point.

“Seems so,” Counselor Daan answered, tucking a curl of hair behind his ear. “The alert originated from a monitoring station at the far edge of the system. It came in at the highest priority level, and it hit system-wide. Every computer linked to the main processing core is sounding the same alarm.”

“But what’s causing it?” the minister asked. “There was no message attached?”

“No,” Daan replied. “We’ve repeatedly asked for clarification, but there’s been no response. We believe…the monitoring station was destroyed.”

Minister Ecka thought for a moment. He rotated his chair away from his advisers, the old wood creaking a little beneath his weight. He looked out through the broad picture window that made up the wall behind his desk. As far as he could see: the golden fields of Hetzal, all the way to the horizon. The world—the whole system, really—believed in using every bit of available space to grow, create, to cultivate.

Buildings were roofed with cropland, rivers and lakes were used to grow helpful algae and waterweeds, towers were terraced, with fruit vines spilling from their sides. Harvester droids floated among them, plucking ripe fruits—whatever was in season. Right now, that would be honeyfruit, kingberries, and ice melons. In a month, it would be something else. On Hetzal, something was always in season.

He loved this view. The most peaceful in the galaxy, he believed.

Everything just so. Productive and correct.

Now, with the alarm chimes ringing in his ears, it didn’t look like that anymore. Now it all just looked…fragile.

“Something’s happening out there,” another adviser said, a

Devaronian woman named Zaffa.

Ecka had known her for a long time, and this was the first time he’d ever heard her sound worried. She was staring down at a datascreen, frowning.

“A mining rig out in midsystem just went down,” Zaffa said. “The satellite network’s starting to show holes, too. It’s like something’s taking out our facilities, one by one.”

“And we still don’t have any images? This is madness,” Ecka declared.

He pointed at his security chief, a portly middle-aged human.

“Borta, why don’t your people know what’s happening?”

Borta frowned. “Minister, respectfully, you know why. Your recent cuts have reduced Hetzal’s security division to a tenth of its former size. We’re working on it, but we can’t bring much to bear.”

“Is it some sort of natural anomaly? It can’t be…we’re not under attack, are we?”

“At this point, we don’t know. What’s happening is consistent with some sort of enemy infiltration, but we’re not seeing drive signatures, and the locations being hit are pretty random. We do still have some orbital defense platforms out there, and they’re all intact. If it’s an attack, they should be targeting our ability to strike back, but they’re not.”

The chimes sounded again, and Ecka spun his chair and pointed at Counselor Daan, who cringed back.

“Will you turn off that blasted alarm? I can’t think!”

Daan pulled himself up, standing a little straighter, and tapped a control on his datascreen. The chimes, blessedly, ceased.

Another adviser spoke up—a slim young man with red hair and extremely pale skin, Keven Tarr. The Ministry of Technology had sent him over. Ecka didn’t have much use for tech that wasn’t related to agricultural yields. In his heart, he was still a farmer—but he knew Tarr was supposed to be very smart. Probably wouldn’t be long until the boy moved on, found himself a job in some more sophisticated part of the galaxy. It was the way of things on a world like Hetzal. Not everyone stayed.

“I think I can show you what’s going on, Minister,” Tarr said.

The man had long fingers for a human, and they danced over his datapad.

“Let me give the data to the droid—it can project the information so we can all see.”

He tapped a few last commands, then unreeled a connection wire from his datapad and plugged it into the access port on the squat, hexagonal comms droid waiting in the corner of the room. It rolled forward, its single green eye lighting up as it moved.

From that eye, the machine projected an image on the large white wall in the minister’s office reserved for the purpose. Normally, presentations on the vidwall would be concerned with crop yields or pest eradication programs. Now, though, it displayed the entire Hetzal system, all its worlds and stations and satellites and platforms and vessels.

And something else.

To Minister Ecka, it looked like a field overrun with a swarm of allconsuming insects. Hundreds of tiny lights moved through his system at what had to be tremendous speed, all in the same direction: sunward. More particularly, planetward. Toward Hetzal Prime and the moons Fruited and Rooted not so far away, not to mention all those stations, satellites, platforms, vessels…many of which had people on them.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Unknown,” Tarr responded. “I got this image by linking together signals from the surviving satellites and monitoring stations, but they’re going down quickly, and we’re losing sensor capacity as they do. Whatever these anomalies are, they’re moving at near-lightspeed, and it’s very difficult to track them. And, of course, whenever they hit something, it’s…”

“Not good,” General Borta finished for him.

“Apocalyptic, I was going to say,” Tarr said. “I’m tracking a good number on impact paths with the primeworld.”

“Is there nothing to be done?” Ecka said, looking at Borta. “Can we…shoot them down?”

Borta gave him a helpless look. “Once, maybe, we’d have had a chance. At least some. But system defense hasn’t been a priority here for…a long time.”

The accusation hung in the air, but Ecka did not indulge it. He had made decisions that seemed correct at the time, with the best information he had. They were at peace! Everywhere was at peace.

Why waste money that could help people in other ways? In any case, no looking back. It was time for another decision. The best he could make.

He did not hesitate. When the crops were burning, you couldn’t hesitate. As bad as things might be, the longer you waited, the worse they tended to get.

“Give the evacuation order. System-wide. Then send a message to Coruscant. Let them know what’s happening. They won’t be able to get anyone here in time, but at least they’ll know.”

Counselor Zaffa looked at him, her eyes hooded.

“I don’t know if we can actually implement that order effectively, Minister,” she said. “We don’t have enough ships here for planetary evacuations, and if these things are really moving close to lightspeed, there isn’t much time until—”

“I understand, Counselor Zaffa,” Ecka said, his voice steady now.

“But even if the order saves just one person, then one person will be saved.”

Zaffa nodded, and tapped her datascreen.

“It’s done,” she said. “System-wide evac in progress.”

The group watched the projection on the wall, fritzes of static lancing through it now. Tarr’s makeshift network was losing capacity as more satellites met fiery ends, but the message was still clear. It was like a massive gun had been fired at the Hetzal system, and there was nothing they could do to save themselves.

“You should probably all try to find yourselves a way offworld,” Ecka said. “I imagine the starships we do have will be very full quite quickly.”

No one moved.

“What will you do, Minister?” Counselor Daan asked.

Ecka turned back to his window, looking out at the fields, golden to the horizon. It was all so peaceful. Impossible to believe anything bad could ever happen here.

“I think I’ll stay,” he said. “Broadcast to the people, maybe, try to keep folks calm. Someone has to look after the harvest.”

Across Hetzal Prime and the broad expanses of its two inhabited moons, the message of Minister Ecka traveled rapidly, appearing on datapads and holoscreens, broadcast across all communication channels, saying, in essence: Nowhere is safe. Get as far away as you can.

Explanation was limited, which caused speculation. What was happening? Some kind of accident? What disaster could be so huge in scope that an entire system needed to be evacuated?

Some people ignored the warning. False alarms had happened before, and sometimes slicers pulled pranks or showed off by breaking into emergency alert computer systems. True, nothing had ever happened on this scale, but really, that made it easier to dismiss the whole thing. After all, the entire system in danger? It just wasn’t possible.

Those people stayed in their homes, at their workplaces. They turned off their screens and got back to their lives, because it was better than the alternative. And if they glanced to the skies from time to time, and saw starships heading up and out…well, they told themselves the people in those ships were fools, easily spooked.

Others, elsewhere, froze. They wanted to find safety but had no idea how. Not everyone had access to a way offworld. In fact, most did not.

Hetzal was a system of farmers, people who lived close to the land. If they traveled anywhere else in the Republic, it was for a special occasion, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Now, being told to find a way to space on a moment’s notice…how? How could they possibly do such a thing?

But some people in Hetzal did have starships, or lived in the cities where space travel was more common. They found their children, gathered their treasures, and raced to the spaceports, hoping they would be the first to arrive, the first to book passage. They, inevitably, were not. They were greeted by crowds, queues, ticket prices spiking to unattainable levels for all but the wealthiest, thanks to unscrupulous opportunists. Tension rose. Fights broke out, and while Hetzal did have a security force to calm these squabbles, these officers also eyed the skies and wondered if they would spend their last moments alive trying to help other people to safety. A noble end, if so…but a desirable one? The security officers were people, too, with families of their own.

Order began to break down.

On the Rooted Moon, a kind trader decided to open the doors of the starship he used to transport the exceedingly fresh produce of the moon to the voracious worlds of the Outer Rim. He offered space to all who could possibly fit, and though his pilot told him the vessel was old, and the engines were a bit past their prime, the trader did not care. This was a moment for magnanimity and hope, and by the light he would save as many as he could.

The ship, holding 582 people, including the trader and his own family, managed to take off from its landing pad, once the pilot pushed its engines to maximum. It just needed to escape the moon’s gravity well. Once they were in space, everything would get easier. They could get away, to safety.

The vessel achieved most of a kilometer before the overtaxed engines exploded. The fireball rained down over those left behind, and they were not sure whether they were lucky or not, considering they still had no idea what was coming for them. Minister Ecka’s message did not say.

A variant on that message was sent out from Hetzal to any other systems or ships that might hear it: We are in desperate trouble. Send aid if you can.

It was picked up by receivers in the other worlds of the Outer Rim— Ab Dalis, Mon Cala, Eriadu, and many more, spreading outward via the Republic’s relay system, and then inward to the planets of the Mid and Inner Rims, the Colonies region, and even the shining Core.

Virtually everyone who heard it wanted to do something to help—but what? It was clear that whatever was happening in Hetzal would be over well before they could arrive.

But ships were sent anyway—mostly medical aid vessels, in the hope they might be able to offer treatment to injured citizens of Hetzal.

If any survived.

“Get to your nearest offworld transport facility,” Minister Ecka said to a cam droid recording his words and image and broadcasting them across the system. “We will send ships to pick up people who don’t have other ways to leave the planet. It might take time, but stay calm and peaceful. You have my word, we will come for you. We are all of the same crop. Hearty stock. We will survive this the way we have survived harsh winters and dry summers, by pulling together.

“We are all Hetzal. We are all the Republic,” he said.

He raised a hand, and the cam droid ceased transmitting. This was the fourth message he had sent since the emergency began, and he hoped his communications were doing some good. Reports suggested they were not—riots were beginning at spaceports on all three inhabited worlds—but what else could he do? He broadcast his messages from his office in Aguirre City, demonstrating that he had not abandoned his people even though he surely could. A show of solidarity. Not much, but something.

Around him, the rest of his staff coordinated their own attempts to assist in whatever way they could. General Borta worked with his meager security fleet to both keep order and ferry people offplanet.

With the help of Counselor Daan, they had organized a number of the huge crop freighters currently in transit to act as relay points, ordering them to dump their cargo and clear all space for incoming refugees.

Each could hold tens of thousands of people. Not comfortably, of course, but this was not a situation where comfort mattered.

Smaller ships were ferrying Hetzalians up to the cargo vessels, offloading their people then rushing back to pick up more. It was an imperfect system, but it was what they had been able to arrange on no notice. There was no plan for something like this.

Minister Ecka blamed himself for that—but how could he have known? This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was impossible, whatever it was. He was just a farmer, after all, and—

No, he thought, suddenly ashamed of himself. He was Minister

Zeffren Ecka, leader of the whole blasted system. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t have anticipated this disaster—it was happening, and he needed to do everything he could.

As he considered that thought, he looked over at Keven Tarr, who had never stopped running his little network, trying to keep information flowing. The young man was now working with three separate datapads and a number of comms droids projecting various displays on the walls, pulling in as much data as he could about the scope of the disaster that continued to wreak havoc in the system. He still had no real answers, other than to continually confirm that Hetzal was being savaged by whatever was afflicting the system. Satellites, arrays, stations…smashed apart by the storm of death that had come calling. It was like the seasonal chewfly swarms that used to plague the Fruited Moon until they had been genetically modified out of existence.

If the swarm came, there was nothing you could do. You hunkered down, survived, and sowed your fields again once it was all done.

Ecka watched as Keven Tarr wiped sweat from his eyes, then looked back at his main datapad, the one he had propped up on the little side table he was using as a desk.

Tarr’s eyes widened, and his fingers froze, hovering over the screen.

“Minister,” he said. “I’m…I’m getting a signal.”

“What signal?” Ecka said.

“I’ll just…I’ll just put it through,” Tarr said, and there was an odd note in his voice, of surprise, or just something unexpected.

Words crackled into the air, one of the technician’s comms droids broadcasting the message out into Minister Ecka’s office. A woman’s voice. Just a few words, but they brought with them, yes…the one thing most needed at that moment.

“This is Jedi Master Avar Kriss. Help is on the way.”

That one thing.

Hope.