Light of the Jedi(32)

Avar listened.

They had succeeded. They had moved the Tibanna.

But they had also failed.

The tank had not moved far enough. It would still hit the sun, and even now, she could sense the liquid heating inside the container, pressure building, preparing for an explosion that would presage the larger blast to come.

Again, she told the Jedi, those of whom could still hear and respond. Many had fallen unconscious at the strain of the first attempt, which meant the burden on those who remained was that much greater.

We have to try again.

Avar could sense the weariness in the song, of all her companions in her great Order, these heroes who had all stayed to save people they had never met and probably never would, people who would never know the choice or the sacrifice being made on their behalf. None of that mattered.

She felt her fellows toss aside their exhaustion, lift themselves up, renew their focus.

Not only that, but she sensed that other Jedi had brought their focus to bear as well—from Coruscant, from across the galaxy. Even Yoda, wherever he was with his little crew of younglings—his great, wise mind sang its own part of the chorus, heartbreakingly beautiful, a voice of pure light belying his physical appearance. Not this crude matter indeed.

Avar would not have believed such a thing was possible—but as she had told the admiral, through the Force, there wasn’t a blasted thing that couldn’t be done. Her great Order was with her, as she was with them, and the Force was with them all.



We will move it.

Another moment chosen, another great effort.

We will move it.

She felt the Jedi saying the words with her, each in their own way, through their own particular lens on the Force. No, not saying. Chanting. Singing.

We will move it.



More Jedi falling—mostly just collapsing where they stood, or spiraling off in their Vectors. Some managed to regain control, but others were lost forever. Rohmar Montgo. Lio Josse.

Jedi Knight Rah Barocci tottered and fell off the tower farm on the Rooted Moon where he had been helping a family whose daughter had suffered a seizure in the stress of the evacuation order. The daughter was calm, her crisis over, but Rah fell twenty stories and did not recover in time to save himself.

With every Jedi lost, the work became harder.

Elzar Mann, standing alone on a rocky promontory overlooking a pharm where the new miracle drug bacta was produced in extremely limited quantities, felt the strain, the inertia of the Tibanna bomb that did not want to be moved.

To Mann, the Force was a bottomless sea, never ending, in which all things swam. Brightly lit in its upper reaches, fading to darkness below, but all one great ocean. He reached out to it, letting himself race along its currents, going deeper than ever before, seeing and sensing things he had never before known. The sea never ended, and there was so much of it he hadn’t seen. Strength flooded through him, his exhaustion vanishing. He added that power to that of his fellows, giving them everything he could.

We will move it.

…

…

…

…



And it will not hit the sun.

The Tibanna entered the outer photosphere of the Hetzal system’s largest star. For a moment, a long moment, the song stopped. Avar Kriss heard nothing but silence.

The fragment burst out of the sun, only having touched its outermost layers, heated but intact, on a path that would take it harmlessly out of the system.

The song burst back into life.

Jedi Master Avar Kriss fell to her knees there in the field on Hetzal Prime. Her lightsaber hilt, now deactivated, hit the ground a moment later, embedding itself in the soft soil.

Avar let herself breathe. Two long breaths, then three. Then she raised her comlink.

“Thank you,” she said.



* * *





Neither Avar Kriss nor any of the other Jedi in Hetzal knew that the events of those moments had been broadcast across the Outer Rim. The signal even found its way to the inner worlds of the Republic, though slightly delayed due to the limitations of the galactic communications network. The signal was sent by Keven Tarr, working from Minister Ecka’s office in Aguirre City, still doing his job despite having had the opportunity to leave on the Third Horizon.

The broadcast was originally just a feed sent to the chancellor’s office on Coruscant at its request, tight-band and secure, to allow Lina Soh and her aides to have the most up-to-date information on the disaster as it progressed to this final phase.

But Keven Tarr made a decision. If these were to be the last moments of Hetzal—his home and the home of billions of others—he did not want such a good place to die unacknowledged. He changed the settings on the feed, stripping out the security codes and sending it to every channel, every relay, every ear and eye it could find.



This, in its way, was a feat of technology just as impossible as what the Jedi were attempting.

In any case, the people of the Republic watched as the fate of Hetzal was decided. They stopped breathing as the Jedi came together to save these worlds, full of people they did not know. This small group of brave people risked their own lives to save others, and used their unique gifts to preserve, to help.

A gasp of dismay rose on a thousand worlds as the first attempt failed, and it was clear that the Jedi had not succeeded. Perhaps could not succeed. Some looked away, not wanting to see the flare of light as the star exploded, followed closely by the death of billions of sentient beings.