"Torpedoes?" Anakin asked.
Han looked at him incredulously. "That'd be like shooting a bantha with a tickle stick," he replied. "It'd take a Star Destroyer to blast that moon, and even if it did, the falling pieces would devastate Sernpidal."
"Then what?" Anakin asked.
"Never seem to have a Death Star lying around when you need one," Han muttered. He glanced over his shoulder at Chewie, who was busy checking readings and working some calculations.
The Wookiee stared intently at the screen, scratched his hairy head a couple of times, then issued a wail, poking the screen.
"Look at what?" Han protested, swiveling his chair about.
Chewie roared emphatically.
"Seven hours?" Han echoed, stunned. "Let me see that." He slapped the Wookiee's hand away, but his scolding ended abruptly as he read the line Chewie had been indicating.
"Our day just got better," Han said, looking back to Anakin. "Sernpidal's got seven hours."
Anakin's jaw dropped open.
"Only chance is that the moon skips along the atmosphere for a while before crashing through," Han explained.
Even as the words left his mouth, the ridiculousness of the whole situation struck him profoundly, left him shaking his head. "This moon's been in orbit for a million years," he commented. "How is this happening, and why now?" A look of suspicion crossed his face, a look that made clear that he wanted to discuss this further with a certain shady operator who had sent him out here.
"You think Lando knew?" Anakin asked, his tone skeptical.
Han offered no response to that theory, but he did wonder if one of those characters with whom Lando dealt might have something to do with all of this - if one of them, perhaps, wasn't pleased that Lando was delivering cargo to a rival. But still, who knew how to bring down a moon? The whole notion seemed utterly preposterous.
To Han, who had spent the better part of the last thirty years fighting against, and utilizing, utterly preposterous plans and equipment, nothing seemed impossible.
The scope on the console to Anakin's side beeped.
"What do you got?" Han asked.
Anakin bent over the scope. "Weather satellite."
Han looked at the moon, rolling along before them. "Get us to it," he instructed his son. "Download its banks," he told Chewie. "Let's see if we can find any clues, or a pattern."
A few moments later, Anakin brought them right up beside the weather satellite, an older Thunderstorm 63 model, and Chewie wasted no time in tying the Millennium Falcon 's computers into the satellite's banks.
Han took the helm back from Anakin and, as soon as Chewie was finished, used some nifty flying to bring the Falcon in close to the moon, even circumnavigating the thing a few times to try and see if there were any added features - a few well-placed ion drives, perhaps. The close inspection offered not a clue, though.
"Keep your eyes open," he instructed Chewie, as the Wookiee swapped places with Anakin, moving back to his customary seat at Han's side.
Chewie growled his assent and worked in perfect sync with Han to keep the Falcon moving slowly and deliberately, as close to the moon as possible.
"Seven hours," Han muttered. "How are we going to get all those people off the planet in seven hours?" Even as he finished the rhetorical question, he put out a general distress call, signaling any and all ships in the region to proceed with all haste to Sernpidal.
That was a call few, if any, would hear in time, he knew.
"You see anything?" he asked Chewie.
The Wookiee growled and shook his head.
"It's coming from the planet!" Anakin cried behind them, and they both instinctively looked down toward Sernpidal and then, when nothing seemed apparent, glanced back at Anakin.
The boy rushed forward, bearing a printout from Chewie's download from the weather satellite. "Look," he said, pointing to a diagram he had generated with the data to show the plotting of Dobido's last two weeks of movement.
The circles showed the smooth ellipse of the orbit until only a couple of days before, when the moon had taken a sudden dip in trajectory with regard to the planet.
"Look at the descent," Anakin explained. "Every time it crosses this part of the planet, it comes down steeper. Something's pulling it down."
Han and Chewie studied the diagram, and sure enough, they could see that every time Dobido crossed over the region of the planet near Sernpidal City, it did indeed dip.
"Maybe they're calling it home with their prayers," Han muttered.
"Something's doing it," Anakin replied, too enthused to catch the joke. He poked his finger against the printout. "Something in the exact middle of this arc." He traced his finger to his estimate of that point, a spot not too far to the east of the city.
Han looked at Chewie, and the Wookiee turned to Anakin, calling for the printouts.
"It's got to be there," Anakin said to Chewie as the Wookiee pored over the data.
Chewie looked up at the boy, then at Han, and howled his agreement.
Now they had a clue, and perhaps a solution would follow.
Han laid in a course for that region, the Falcon swooping under Dobido and breaking right back through the atmosphere. He and Chewie studied the region east of the city, looking for some clues, or for a ship, perhaps, like an Interdictor cruiser, known for its gravity-well projectors that could simulate the tremendous effects of a stellar body in hyperspace and prevent fleeing ships from making the jump to lightspeed.
Meanwhile, Anakin studied the movement of Dobido, which was again crossing the area of greatest descent. Sure enough, the moon dipped noticeably in its trajectory, and Anakin updated Chewie's calculations with the new data.
Han heard his groan. "What do you got?"
"No way will the moon skip off the atmosphere," Anakin explained. "Not if that pull remains. And I'm guessing under six hours, not seven, because the descent increases with every pass. One more thing ..." He paused, waiting for them to turn around. "Not that it really matters, but I think the moon will hit Sernpidal City."
"What a coincidence," Han said dryly.
Chewie growled his accord, and it was the first time Han had ever heard such an obvious display of sarcasm from the Wookiee.
Sernpidal City came in sight again a moment later, the Falcon turning about in its patrol. "There's fifty thousand people in that city alone," Han remarked.
"And probably no more than a hundred ships," Anakin added.
A long silence, a long moment of dread. "We've got to find the source," Han demanded.
They took the Falcon right in for the dock. Han prepared himself to argue with the controller, to succinctly tell the man to back off, but no call came out to them at all, and as they neared the place, moving to a lower position, they understood why. A huge quake rocked the city, with waves of moving ground rolling under buildings and down streets, toppling walls and throwing pedestrians wildly.
"Good thing it's not a coastal city," Anakin remarked.
At the reminder, Han brought the Falcon out of its descent and zipped away to the south, toward the nearest seacoast. Nestled in a valley on the back side of the mountain range south of Sernpidal City was a large village, a settlement of several thousand.
Anakin groaned as the Falcon climbed past the initial peaks. Han didn't even have to ask why. The boy was extremely sensitive to disturbances in the Force - he had just felt the death of the mountain village.
Sure enough, as the Falcon crested the last peaks, they saw the disaster, the rushing sea swarming into the valley, washing away homes, trees, everything, with such sudden, violent force that before they even dipped lower they knew that everyone in the valley was already dead.
Han swooped back to the north, accelerating, and brought the Falcon in at a straight run to the docking bay. A crowd swarmed about the gates as the ship arrived - people suddenly realizing the fact of their impending doom and desperate to find an escape.
Han looked to Chewie. "You load
the ship," he instructed. "Pack them in as tight as you can."
"We've got to mobilize all the other ships," Anakin said. "We can't let any take off unless they're full."
Han nodded. "Still not enough," he reminded. "We've got to find that source and take it out."
"I can find it," Anakin volunteered.
Han froze and looked at him hard.
"I can," Anakin insisted. "Then you and Chewie come in with the Falcon and blast it."
Han spent a long moment studying his younger son. He understood that he'd be better suited than Anakin to do the necessary evacuation work here at the docks - it would take someone of Han's age and experience, someone who could maintain respect, and, in the absence of that, control the crowd with cunning. Anakin would be able to do much, particularly with any use of the Force, but this situation might become politically charged soon enough, especially if Sernpidal's authorities - and where were they, anyway? - showed up to investigate, bringing with them all those layers of intrigue that always accompanied such situations. Given that, Han's experience would prove invaluable.
Still, the thought of sending Anakin to find this unknown source, this instrument powerful enough to bring down a moon, terrified him.
But he had to trust in his son.
"We'll get you a landspeeder," he said. "You get out there and find the source, and call in the coordinates right away. Don't play around with it, just call it in."
Anakin nodded and moved to the weapons locker, strapping a blaster onto his belt opposite the lightsaber.
"Don't you try to do it yourself," Han demanded. "You find it, and call it in, and get the hell out of the way."
Anakin stared long and hard at Han, the two locking gazes, and a moment of trust passed between them.
Sernpidal City was even more chaotic than Han could imagine. Many locals were out in the streets, on their knees, crying and praying for Tosi-karu to make her arrival.
The irony of those prayers was not lost on Han.
Many more people swarmed the docking gates, and every now and then the sound of a blaster echoed through the buzzing air. Han had figured that if they loaded every available ship to capacity, they might be able to get the bulk of the city's residents out of there, but when he came down the landing ramp and saw the magnitude of the chaos and panic, he doubted they would ever come close to accomplishing that.
From a bay not far away, a small shuttle blasted off, and watching it streak into the sky, the three were horrified to see people hanging on to its landing legs. One after another, they fell, shrieking, plummeting to their deaths.
Another quake ripple rocked the city, buckling one of the walls right into the Falcon , though the tough old ship appeared to sustain no damage.
"Clear that!" Han yelled to Chewie. The Wookiee rushed back inside, and a moment later, the forward laser cannons fired, three short bursts, and the rubble was blasted to pieces.
"You'll never get there," Han said to Anakin.
"I've got to try."
Han looked at his son. He didn't want to send the boy out into this maelstrom, with quakes and riots and general panic, but neither could he deny the necessity. If they didn't find the source, and soon, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, would die.
He grabbed Anakin by the arm and ran down the ramp with him, drawing his blaster and waving it about to keep the scrambling mob at bay. Outside, they did indeed find a landspeeder, with a familiar old man, the mayor, sitting calmly on a bench beside it.
"Hey, that's mine!" another man protested, seeing Han help Anakin over the side and into the cockpit.
"Go with him, then, if you want," Han shot back. "Or help me get some of these people onto my ship."
After a split second's thought, the choice seemed more than obvious, and the man ran past Han and back toward the waiting Falcon .
"What are you doing?" Han asked the mayor, who had come waddling over, a large pack on his back.
He shrugged. "Waiting for the goddess to arrive, I guess," he answered with a chuckle. "I knew you'd come back."
Han looked at him curiously.
"Hero type," the old man said calmly. "Can you stop the moon from falling?"
"I haven't got that kind of weaponry," Han answered.
"Is it being pulled down here by something?" the surprising old man asked. "By a gravity well, an Interdictor cruiser, perhaps?"
Han's look became even more skeptical.
"I haven't always lived here," the old man explained. "And I'm no stranger to the more advanced ships." He gave another, self-deprecating chuckle. "Maybe that's why the Sernpidalians elected me mayor."
Han motioned for him to come on. "Go with my son," he instructed.
"Where shall we run?"
"Just go," Han growled. "He'll explain the plan on the way."
The old man climbed in, and Anakin handed him the charts, then put the landspeeder into full throttle, zooming down the street.
A roar from Chewie told Han that there was trouble brewing back inside the Falcon . He reminded himself to thank Lando profusely when he got back, then ran for his ship.
Chapter 16 Worthy Opponent They didn't, couldn't, say a word as the Jade Sabre approached the now-yellow-and-green planet known as Belkadan. Luke and Mara had done their homework on the way to the planet, and they held no doubts, with visual inspection looming before them, that something on the planet had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
It wasn't the lack of response, other than the incredible amounts of static, whenever they tried to hail the scientific outpost, ExGal-4. In truth, any response would have surprised them, for merely in observing the planet, they knew.
Belkadan was, to their way of looking at things, dead.
"What were they doing at that station?" Mara asked.
"Observations," Luke replied. "Just staring out at the galactic rim."
"That's what ExGal tells the public," Mara said skeptically.
Luke turned to regard her. "You think this is an experiment gone wrong?"
"Can you think of anything else that might have done this?" Mara asked. "You've read the reports on Belkadan - full of huge trees and small seas, and with clear air and blue skies. The only thing that kept the place from being more appealing was the rather difficult animals that called it home."
"The reports from the station indicated that they lived behind protected walls," Luke agreed.
"So if animals had found their way in and destroyed the station, it wouldn't be so surprising," Mara reasoned. "Do you know any animals that could cause this?" She waved her hand at the viewport and the curving line of Belkadan's horizon, and the roiling, noxious-looking clouds.
"The reports from their headquarters on Coruscant and from this particular station give no hints that anything more than observation was going on here," Luke said, but his tone wasn't so firm. How could it be, with such devastating evidence as the view before them? Something had gone very wrong down there, something brutal, and Luke understood that such catastrophes were usually the work of reasoning beings.
Mara glanced down at her console's smaller viewscreen, scrolling the information of the composition of the clouds. "Carbon dioxide and methane, mostly," she explained, and that came as no surprise to either her or Luke. "In tremendous concentrations. Even if there is a layer of breathable air below, it would be too hot down there to support much life."
Luke nodded. "We've got to go down and see."
Mara didn't disagree, but her concerned look was not lost on Luke. Neither was her color; Luke had noted that Mara's complexion had paled as they had approached Belkadan, and he could sense a bit of her internal weakening. The flight from Dubrillion had been easy enough, but Luke now feared that all of this, the trip to the Outer Rim, the tour of Lando's incredible city, and now the journey out here to Belkadan, might be proving too taxing for his wife.
"We can call back and do a few more readings," Luke offered instead. "ExGal will muster the right ships to come out and see wh
at happened here."
"We're here now," Mara pointedly reminded.
Luke shook his head. "We haven't got the right equipment," he explained. "We can do the preliminary scan, and relay that information, but the Jade Sabre isn't really built for flying into that mess."
Mara's expression shifted from surprised to angry as she came to the obvious conclusion that Luke was trying to protect her. "The Jade Sabre can fly through a firestorm," she replied. "She can blow a starfighter out of the sky and run circles around Star Destroyers. She's as good a shuttle as anyone will find, and better than anything ExGal will put together."
"Neither of us are trained in -" Luke started to say.
"There might be people still down there," Mara harshly interrupted. "They might even be hearing our call, but unable to respond. So we should just fly away? Back to the safety of Lando's planet?"
"Nothing with Lando is ever safe," Luke replied with a halfhearted smile, a feeble attempt to lighten the mood.
"But he does have doctors, right?" Mara said sarcastically. "Because we need doctors."
"Doctors?" Luke echoed, but the word died on his lips, for he knew Mara had seen right through him and his attempts to protect her, and that this, above anything else in all the galaxy, brought up the fires in the independent woman. Luke could yell at her, even insult her, during their occasional arguments, and she'd give it back to him tenfold, but never, ever, would Mara Jade Skywalker accept condescension. She was ill, true, but she would not be treated as if she was incapacitated. Their course now seemed obvious; their duty compelled them down to the planet, to the outpost to rescue survivors or, perhaps, to retrieve bodies, and to retrieve, as well, any information that might tell them what had happened to Belkadan.
Luke buckled his harness tight about him. "It'll be a rough ride down," he remarked. But he understood that, for him, the ride down to Belkadan wouldn't be half as bad as the ride back to Lando's might have been had he insisted on it.
As soon as the Jade Sabre broke the rim of Belkadan's atmosphere, Luke understood just how much his last words had been an understatement. Violent winds buffeted the shuttle, and some unforeseen electromagnetic imbalance sent the sensors and other instruments screaming out error messages and alarm bells. Systems failed and then came back on-line; at one point, there was a sudden drop to the right, and both Luke and Mara thought their harness belts would cut right through them. Behind them, secured in a pod much like his seat on Luke's X-wing, R2-D2 screeched and chattered.
Star Wars The New Jedi Order - Vector Prime - Book 1 Page 23