Star Wars

by Charles Soule

  Te’Ami had her suspicions. She visualized a ship traveling through hyperspace, a cargo vessel, with compartments dedicated to all sorts of cargo—raw materials, fuel…and passengers, probably settlers bound for new lives on the barely inhabited Outer Rim worlds. Something happens to that ship in the hyperlane, and it cracks apart. All of those bits and pieces reappear from hyperspace at once, and that event has the bad luck to occur at the transit point just outside Hetzal.

  Most of the wreckage would be inert, just chunks of metal. But some, if properly shielded, could be those passenger compartments, the people inside still alive, but with no way to stop their tumbling flight through space, filled with the fear and panic Burryaga had sensed, waiting to die. Waiting for help that would not come.

  But help had arrived, despite everything. The Jedi and the Republic were here, and they would save the lives of every last one of those people, and everyone on the Fruited Moon, too.

  “Now,” Te’Ami said, the command transmitted simultaneously to Nib, Mikkel, and Burryaga, as well as Joss and his copilot Pikka. It was time for everyone to do their part.

  The Jedi had discussed their approach, but only briefly. Their task was, on the face of it, simple. They reached out with the Force, touched the passenger compartment on all sides, embraced it in all the power and energy they could command, and understood its nature as best they could. Every surface, every beam, strut, and cable, and most important—the lives inside it, the beings they were trying to save.

  They looped the Force around the speeding fragment. Te’Ami had once seen a rodeo, on a world called Chandar’s Folly. The point was to subdue enraged animals using only long lengths of rope or cable. The brave fools who participated looped the lassos around each creature’s neck, leaping on its back and riding it until either they were thrown free or the beast eventually calmed.

  Mostly, the would-be riders were tossed four or five meters into the air before crashing to the dirt. Sometimes the landing was hard, sometimes soft.

  This was like that—they were lassoing the passenger compartment with the Force—but the chances of a soft landing seemed unlikely. The Jedi closed their loops around the racing chunk of wreckage and pulled back. Te’Ami’s breath left her with a whoosh, her lungs emptying. Nothing had changed about her physical location—she was still seated in the cockpit of her Vector, speeding at the same velocity she had a moment before—but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like she had been yanked out into open space and was being dragged along, utterly out of control.

  It seemed impossible that anything the four Jedi could do would influence the speed of this thing in any way, but they had to try. Joss Adren had been clear—even a one percent change could be significant.

  “Slow…it down…” she managed, speaking through gritted teeth. She could feel oil gathering in the sacs along her ribs, her body’s involuntary response to great strain. The acrid stink of the stuff filled her cockpit, an evolutionary throwback and defense mechanism from the days when the Duros were liable to be eaten by any number of things prowling their world.

  “Trying…” Mikkel spat back, strain in his natural voice slipping past the translator’s efforts to subdue it. Te’Ami wondered how Ithorians responded to stress. Probably not by producing large amounts of horrible-tasting oil.

  “Captain Adren,” Te’Ami said, “we’ve done what we can. If you’re going to do something, now is the moment.”

  “Acknowledged, Master Jedi,” Joss replied. He sounded tense, too. “Remember, if you can try to hold the module together once we lock on, it’d be appreciated. This might get a little bumpy.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  “All right. Firing magclamps in three…two…”

  Four metal disks shot out into space ahead of their formation, angling toward the passenger compartment. The thing was venting vapor from either a coolant or a life-support system, creating a thick fog into which the disks vanished. Thick, silvery lines unspooled—the cabling attached to the Longbeam’s winches, with which they would attempt to slow the wreckage down. Three of the lines went taut, the other looping and coiling in space.

  “We hit it with three out of four. As good as we can hope. We’re gonna apply reverse thrusters. Get ready.”

  Through the Force, Te’Ami could feel new strains and stressors on the system, all its complex linkages and connections. Longbeam to wreckage, Force to Jedi, wreckage to Force, and now a new note of confusion from the poor survivors inside the compartment, who must have heard the thumps as the clamps engaged, probably sounding like kicks from a giant, with no idea what was about to happen to them.

  Honestly, Te’Ami didn’t know, either. The Longbeam activated its thrusters and dropped out of formation, the long, thick cabling stretching, growing thin, then impossibly thin, then vanishing to the naked eye. Captain Adren had told her this would happen, the silk that composed the cables was able to stretch almost to the molecular level and retain its strength. The cables were holding. The compartment to which they were attached…perhaps not so much.

  “It’s going to break apart,” Nib Assek said. Burryaga whined mournfully in the background.

  “No, it won’t,” Mikkel grunted. “We won’t let it. Just…hold it together.”

  “Stop talking and do it,” Te’Ami said.

  The overstressed box of metal, plastoid, and wiring did not want to continue to exist in its current form. It had been through too much, and knew it. It wanted to disintegrate, escape from the weight and heat and become a swarm of much tinier bits, all free to head off on their own trajectories.

  If not for the Jedi, it would have done exactly that. They used the Force to keep the container in one piece, the loops of resistance they had used to slow it now used to maintain its integrity.

  It didn’t seem like it would work. It was too much all at once—on top of everything else, the exhausted Jedi had to keep their Vectors flying at top speed, close enough to the passenger compartment that they could maintain their links.

  And in the back of their minds, distraction, as some new crisis burgeoned elsewhere in the system. An increasing sense of alarm swelling along Avar Kriss’s network—but they had no time for that. They had their own crisis right here.

  The wreckage ahead of them shifted, like a pile of stones about to tumble after one is removed, and Te’Ami opened her mouth and groaned, a sound of intense strain, as physical as internal. She could still feel the compartment pulling on her, and now she knew that if she let go, if she released her hold even a little, her Vector could be torn apart around her. Now it wasn’t just the lives of the people aboard the compartment, or even on the moon, now so close she could see its disk looming in space, growing larger every second.

  Te’Ami stopped thinking about any of those things. She closed her eyes and let the Force guide her. For long seconds, nothing but chaos, strain, stress. And then…a lessening. The slightest release in tension—but it made everything simpler. As Captain Adren had said, even a one percent reduction was meaningful.

  Then one became two, and more, and the objects working against one another became a single system.

  The compartment slowed. More, and more, until it came to a slow stop, the Longbeam reeling it in on its cables.

  “Whoa,” came Captain Adren’s voice over the comm. “I really didn’t think that would work.”

  “You certainly waited long enough to tell us,” came Mikkel’s reply. Even through his translator, he sounded utterly exhausted.

  “Almost out of fuel,” said Joss, ignoring the remark, “couple more seconds and we’d have had to shut off our thrusters. We couldn’t have done that alone. Thank you, Jedi.”

  “We couldn’t have done it by ourselves, either,” Te’Ami said. “And the idea was yours. Whether you thought it would work or not, it did.”

  Pikka Adren spoke. “We can suit up and go ove
r there, see if there’s some way to extract the passengers. If not, we can tow it to a station, dock it there. At the very least, we can get them some medical attention. I’m sure they’re banged up.”

  “All right,” Te’Ami replied. “Thank you. We’ll pass along how we achieved this—I’m sure other rescue teams will find the information useful.”

  She maneuvered her Vector up and alongside the passenger compartment, moving close. The module had portholes along its length, and in them, she could see faces. Beings of all types, all ages, all alive. She sensed their fear beginning to lessen, replaced with—

  A huge flash of alarm shot through the system-wide net of awareness being maintained by Avar Kriss. Again, no words, but if the sensation could be translated, it would be just these words: “Jedi. You are needed. Now.”

  Something was very, very wrong.

  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 recepto
rs 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.”