Light of the Jedi(20)
“Yeah, well,” Joss said, “I had an idea about that, too.”
He activated his comm system.
“Master Te’Ami,” he said. He wasn’t sure if the Duros Jedi actually was a Jedi Master, or a Jedi Knight, or some other rank in the Order, but he called them all Master. Better safe than sorry. Joss didn’t know if the Jedi could even get offended, but why take a chance?
“Yes, Captain Adren?” came the Jedi’s voice, cool and utterly without tension, even though she was facing the same impossible problems he was.
“I might have an idea. But I have a question. You know how you guys can move things around by thinking about it?”
A bit of a pause.
“We use our connection to the Force, but yes, I know what you mean.”
“Can you stop things from moving around?”
Another, longer pause.
“I see where you’re going with this, Captain, but we’re not gods. We can’t just stop that thing cold.”
“Not asking you to,” Joss said, rolling his eyes at Pikka, who grinned at him. “We have something aboard that might be able to slow it down, but it’s not easy to use. We’ll have to try to match velocity with the fragment, and we all know how fast it’s going. It’ll take every bit of engine power we have, and a lot of our fuel, just to accelerate to where we need to be.
“If you can slow it down even a little, even five percent, even one percent, it could make a big difference. At these speeds, even a minor downward shift in velocity would still mean a significant reduction in the resources we’d have to expend.”
“One moment,” Te’Ami said. The line went cold, and Joss figured she was probably talking to the other Jedi, seeing if they thought this would work.
The comm hissed back to life.
“We’ll do what we can,” the Jedi said.
“Excellent,” Joss said. Then a thought, and he leaned forward and spoke into the comm again.
“And, uh, if you could maybe try to hold the fragment together, too, when you slow it down?”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to hit it with these big metal clamp things, and we don’t know how fragile it is. We don’t even know what it is. Might cause it to just shatter. So if there’s anything you could do to, you know…prevent that…might be good.”
A very long pause.
“This is the best idea you have?”
“Only idea I have, Master Jedi. If we can connect to the thing, we can reverse engines, full power, but gradual, slow it down. We’re not seeing any drive signatures from it—it’s like a projectile from a slugthrower. Like someone whipped a rock real fast. If we could get some opposing force on it, should drain down the velocity pretty quick. If, uh, it doesn’t break apart. But that’s where you guys come in.”
The longest pause yet.
“As I said, Captain…we will do what we can.”
“Great,” Joss said.
He snapped off the comm and turned to Pikka.
“The space wizards don’t seem very excited about this,” she said.
“Eh,” he answered. “They’ll be excited when it works.”
“Is it going to work?” she asked. “Or will the thing break apart, or will the cables snap and whiplash us off into space, or will we just not be able to latch on no matter what we try?”
“Eh,” Joss said again.
He pushed the throttle all the way forward, and the Longbeam leapt into space, the engines roaring, every surface vibrating with power.
“Let’s find out.”
A line of four vessels, carrying approximately thirty-five hundred people, moved at a steady pace away from Hetzal Prime. They sought safety from the barrage of deadly projectiles that had infiltrated the system and continued to wreak havoc. From the farthest reaches all the way to the gas harvesting stations near the three suns that powered Hetzal’s endless growing seasons, destruction reigned.
Two of the ships were passenger liners, and two were cargo freighters temporarily repurposed as transports for the duration of the emergency. While the passenger liners were capable of greater speed than the freighters, all four captains had opted to remain together as they traversed space on their way out of the system, so as to render aid to one another if needed.
Minister Ecka’s evacuation order had asked all ships to reach “minimum safe distance” but was vague on what that might actually mean. To find their path to safety, the captains were relying on the Republic vessel that had transited into the system at the start of all this. It was coordinating efforts from the surface of Hetzal Prime, sending out a tracking feed. From that, the captains could see the path of the deadly rain of projectiles falling on the system. It gave them a sense of where safety might lie.
Based on what they could see, they should be out of the danger zone soon. After that…who knew? Apparently, the Republic and their Jedi colleagues were executing some sort of plan, but no one on the ships knew what it was, or when it would be possible to return to their homeworld. Assuming they ever could. For all they knew, the situation was permanent, and they would never set foot on Hetzal Prime again.
This turned out to be true.
In less than the blink of an eye, the ships vanished, replaced with four slowly expanding balloons of fire and vapor and shredded metal and molecular remnants of the thousands of people aboard. One of the projectiles had exited hyperspace directly in their path, and because the vessels had grouped together for safety, it pierced them all, one after the other, like a skewer through bits of meat. The ships were gone.