Light of the Jedi(25)

“I should know better than to say this,” Admiral Kronara said, “but I believe the worst might be over.”

You should know better than to say that, Avar thought. The Force was still singing in her mind, and right in the middle of it, still, a huge, blank spot. A silence. Something she was missing.

The admiral stepped to a comm station to take the call from the chancellor. Avar did not take her eyes off the screen.

What am I missing? she asked herself. What?

Something caught her attention—one of the hyperspace anomalies, deep in the system, not far from the largest of Hetzal’s three suns.

Avar beckoned to the closest bridge officer, then pointed at the display.

“This,” she said, pointing at the anomaly near the sun. “What is this, Lieutenant?”

The officer looked where she indicated.

“One of the fragments, Master Kriss,” he replied. “It doesn’t have any living beings aboard, and fortunately we can more or less ignore it.”

“Ignore it? Why?”

He tapped a control on a datapad. A dotted line appeared on the display, showing the projectile’s path. It would follow a short arc through the inner system before vanishing deep into the sun.



“As you can see,” the lieutenant said, gesturing at the display, “it will just fall into the star and be vaporized. Fortunate, really—we don’t have any ships near it. It exited hyperspace deep in the system, and most of our resources are deployed elsewhere.”

Avar frowned.

“There’s something else. Something about it. The Force drew my attention to it, and we need to understand why. Do you know what it is? Specifically, I mean?”

The officer hesitated, squinting at the screen as if that might tell him something new.

“It’s too far away for our onboard sensors to get any additional information, ma’am,” the officer said. “I can check with the Hetzalian administrators, though. They might have some satellites closer that could provide more information.”

“Please,” Avar said. “And hurry.”

The officer nodded and moved away, headed for a communications console.

Admiral Kronara, back from his conversation with the chancellor, stepped up beside her. “What is it, Master Jedi?” he said.

“I don’t know yet, Admiral,” Avar replied. “Trust in the Force.”

“Well, obviously,” Kronara said.

“How is the chancellor?”

“Relieved, I would say. This wasn’t a good day, but she knows it could have been much worse. Chancellor Soh asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t answer yet—about the source of the anomalies, whether it would happen again, things like that. She’s thinking long-term.”

“That’s her job,” Avar said. “What do you think she’ll do?”

“If I had to guess, she’s worried this was some kind of attack. I know it’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible. Enemies don’t usually announce their intentions to hit you ahead of time.”



“They also don’t usually send engineless passenger compartments filled with people, Admiral. What are those supposed to be? Some sort of invasion force?”

“I’m not going to pretend I know, Master Kriss. It could be some bizarre tactic we don’t yet understand. The important thing is that we were here to help stop it, and—”

“Sir, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, and both admiral and Jedi turned to look at him. The officer was pale, and Avar could sense the man was on the verge of despair. Like he had just stepped off a cliff.

“You know we’ve been collating our own sensor data with the in-system resources being coordinated through the minister’s office in Aguirre City,” he said. “Their primary tech is a man named Keven Tarr—he’s been able to do some truly remarkable things, keeping their satellite networks running despite all the damage from the hyperspace incursions. It’s all very impressive, actually, and—”

“Lieutenant, please,” Admiral Kronara said. “What is it?”

The officer nodded and spoke again.

“Tarr diverted everything he has left to getting a scan of the anomaly Master Kriss indicated—the one the, ah, Force pointed out to her. Turns out it’s a container module of some kind, huge, and it must have been damaged somehow. It’s leaking. Just a little, but enough that Tarr’s network could run a spectrographic analysis. It’s…”

The lieutenant took a breath.

“…it’s liquid Tibanna. The whole thing. And the star it’s headed for is an R-class.”

Admiral Kronara swore, which came as a mild shock to Avar.

“Bad, I take it?” she asked.

The admiral stared at the display for a long moment, his jaw clenched.

“Honestly?” he said.

He turned to look at her.

“Couldn’t be much worse.”





Three Jedi Vectors flew in formation above and to either side of the Republic Longbeam piloted by Joss and Pikka Adren. Te’Ami to the larger ship’s right, Mikkel Sutmani to its left, and Nib Assek and Burryaga above. They had accelerated to the limits of their ship’s capabilities, chasing the speeding projectile due to impact the Fruited Moon in a matter of minutes, killing billions—those on the moon as well as the people aboard the anomaly.